Like other birds, parrots have a completely different structure of the respiratory tract than mammals. Parrots commonly inhale and exhale air through the nares, thus breathing with an open beak is always disquieting. The air then flows through a relatively complex system of posterior nasal apertures, which are placed above the palate.
Nanday Parakeet (Aratinga nenday)
Since dinosaurs are the ancestors of birds, everyone who has watched the film JURASSIC PARK III, where they were created on a 3D printer from Velociraptor, has an idea of what these choanae actually look like. The air then continues into the oropharynx and further into the trachea, lungs, and air sacs. When exhaled, the air from some air sacs passes through the lungs again. Therefore, birds are extremely sensitive to the presence of toxic substances in the air. Miners in the German Harz Mountains, where coal and lead, as well as tin and gold, were mined, were the first to take advantage of that a long time ago. There was a real danger of methane accumulation, especially in the coal seams. At that moment, canaries began to fly confusedly in their cages, then sitting apathetically with their heads hanging down. That was a signal for the miners to rapidly evacuate.
Historical records contain information about canaries saving dozens of lives. They were bred in every mining household at the time, and it was believed that the better the canary sang, the better the methane detector is. This eventually led to the origination of a branch of the Harz Rollers’ breeding. It is interesting that canaries were used to detect methane in the Ostrava region until 1939.
Returning to parrots, we must also remark that, like all other birds, they have no diaphragm. This means that the body cavity is integrated, divided only by the walls of the air sacs, which, however, are only thin, transparent, and membranous structures. In practice, this means that any infectious process can easily spread from the kidneys up to the heart and lung area.
If the parrot sneezes several times a day, it is very important to assess whether sneezing produces secretion or it is dry. Once secretion occurs during sneezing, an infectious or allergic cause may be considered, while dry sneezing may signal an organ dysfunction, usually due to cardiomyopathy. If the secretion during multiple sneezing is thin and unturbid in the long term, we can consider an allergic reaction to "something" from the surrounding environment as the cause (flowers, new furniture off-gassing, smog…).
Before contacting a veterinarian, it is possible to repeatedly drop NASIVIN into the nares as a first aid, or use an aroma lamp with TEA TREE OIL or MANUKA OIL. Once the secretion thickens and turns yellow or green, it is clear that bacterial contamination of the mucosa has occurred, whether secondarily or primarily. At this point, it is ideal to perform both bacterioscopic and culture examinations at the veterinarian’s. Bacterioscopy will reveal the morphology of the causative agent within 10 minutes and can indicate what can be used for initial therapy. Culture examination, which can take up to several days though, will provide us with information about the causative agent and its sensitivity to antibiotics that can be used for further treatment.
If sneezing is dry and occurs mainly after flying about in an aviary or after food intake or mental excitement, I recommend performing an X-ray examination focussed on the heart area and biochemical blood tests at the veterinarian’s. Cardiomyopathy may be the cause, which has been increasingly diagnosed, especially in large parrots. These are very frequent cases from the past, when the breeder used antibiotics himself for a problem with dyspnoea, which failed to work. So the bird underwent subsequent treatment with several other antibiotics following advice of known breeders, yet the problem did not disappear, since in this case, the therapy after carrying out the diagnostics is completely different and, surprisingly, relatively successful.
