The conjunctiva is the membrane that lines the inside of the eye lid. When the conjunctiva gets inflamed or infected, we call it “conjunctivitis”. Conjunctivitis is a common eye disease in parrots. It can be caused by vitamin A deficiency, viral infection, injury or parasitic infection. If not treated in time, the disease would develop to blindness or even death.
Symptoms for a parrot eye conjunctivitis:
- Swollen or red eye-lids
- Eye lids closed or partially closed
- Increased frequency of blinking
- Discharge
- Often rub the eye, beak or face on their claw or perch
Treatment:
- Feed the bird with seeds and fruits that are rich in vitamin A.
- Put the sick bird alone in a cage in case infecting other birds.
- The bird with eye infection fears lighting. Use a cloth to sleeve the cage or put the cage in a dark place to reduce the lighting stimulation to the bird’s eye.
- Use normal saline to wash the bird’s eye.
- Apply tetracycline ointment or other antibiotics ointments on the bird’s eye, or you can drip antibiotics eye drops into the infected bird eye.
- Perform the above steps for one week, if situation persists without going better, it’s very possible that the conjunctivitis causes the internal infection or the conjunctivitis is actually caused by internal infection. We need to add antibiotics into the bird food.