Psittacine Beak and Feather Disease - History

History

The first report of featherless, dirty-looking birds in Australian bush was in 1907 by Edwin Ashby. He described apparently PBFD-infected Red-rumped Parrots in the Adelaide Hills, South Australia in 1888.

The condition is more prevalent in widely occurring Australian species such as the Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, Little Corella and Galah.

At one time, Australian birds with PBFD signs were thought to be suffering from a condition caused by an exclusive sunflower seed diet, which is often the main source of food for Australian cockatoos in captivity. This is now known to be false.

The first case of chronic PBFD was reported in a Control and Therapy article in 1972 for the University of Sydney by Ross Perry FACVSc (Avian health), in which he described it as "Beak Rot in a Cockatoo". Dr. Perry subsequently studied the disease and wrote extensively about its clinical features in a range of psittacine birds in a long article in which he named the disease "Psittacine Beak and Feather Disease Syndrome" (PBFDS). This soon became known as Psittacine Beak and Feather Disease (PBFD).

Read more about this topic:  Psittacine Beak And Feather Disease

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