20/10/2025
Dear Friends and Followers
As you all know, we have taken a huge step back from parrot boarding to support a better work life balance and enjoy more quality time together and time with our own fur and feather family. This does not mean we are any less passionate about parrot related things and, of course, about parrot boarding.
We are aware that there have been several newcomers to the parrot boarding world and we genuinely, and enthusiastically, applaud this as more are so desperately needed. What we are both deeply concerned about however is where there is a lack of any form of disease testing and the fact that this is sometimes 'alarmingly' declared a positive thing.
So, I just wanted to share that, before we launched the Parrot Lodge in 2014, our primary concern was how to do it as safely as possible. To do this we consulted with two of the UK's leading avian vets of the time, about how to provide the safest possible environment for birds, one that would keep the risk of introducing infectious disease to our own flock to a minimum whilst also minimising the risk to any boarding birds.
The advice came back that, in an ideal world, each bird would have its own partitioned and sealed area within a room with a cage, a flight area and with its own air supply and air extraction/purifying unit. We should wear separate gowns while handling each bird and should regularly fog the rooms (and ourselves) using F10 disinfectant. For outside aviaries, these should be covered and have a safety door.
If this 'kennel /clinical style' set-up was not an option (which it was not given the space available to us) then both vets emphatically advised that we should put in place a robust disease testing protocol, explaining that multiple diseases could be tested through just one blood and feather sample. They also advised that we should house our own flock separately to boarding birds and strive to create as calm an environment as possible with plenty of space between cages, supervised out time and not too many birds at any one time as inevitably, the higher the number of boarders, the higher the risk. Cage content and covers need to be cleaned/disinfected between boarders and we should regularly fog the boarding room, and our house, to neutralise feather dust and any dried faecal particles.
This is the advice we chose to follow and we invested a lot of time, effort and money preparing and equipping ourselves, not just with cages, perches and toys etc., but with other things like a fogger, nebuliser, house alarm, webcams, night lights, specialised home and liability insurance etc. Critically, we also spent time researching and agreeing disease screening profiles and costs with laboratories and a process with the veterinary practices to keep costs as low as possible for our clients.
Even now when we only board a few parrots that we have known for many years and know that they do not mix with other birds, we continue to strip out and disinfect cages, perches, toys and covers between visitors and we continue to fog the room and our house at regular intervals.
Both avian vets that we initially consulted with have since retired but we have continued to consult with two other leading avian specialists, Dr Tom Dutton at Great Western Exotics in Swindon, and Dr Tariq Abou-Zahr of Valley Vets in Cardiff. My last boarding discussion with them was specifically to review our test protocol and to ask if we might reduce the number of diseases being screened for. Both vets were 'independently' of the opinion that we were right to continue screening for all of the diseases and actually recommended we add a disease to the screening protocol for new clients given the rising number of cases being presented in clinic. In other words, the number of infectious diseases being seen in companion parrots is on the rise and not on the decline!
In the 11 years that we have boarded we have had to decline to board a number of parrots due to a failed disease screen, the last one being early this year due to a positive PBFD test.
Yes, I would agree that the ratio of boarding birds compared to failed disease screens is low but, oh my goodness, how relieved we have been to know that we did not invite disease into the home under a deadly 'cloak of invisibility!
Remember, many diseases lay dormant until there is a stress trigger - such as a boarding situation - and some diseases, like PBFD, which is transmitted through feather dander and faecal dust can live as long as two years in an environment. Hence the need to regularly fog.
We have always said that we cannot guarantee to eliminate EVERY risk when multiple parrots are in an environment together. It is however possible to reduce the odds dramatically.
To our fellow boarders who are enjoying the exhausting but rich rewards of caring for these complex, wonderful characters, but do not have any test protocols in place, I would urge you to please re-think. It need not be a barrier to the success of your boarding business - in fact , it might save it! We have enjoyed 11 years of boarding frenzy at The Parrot Lodge and, if we were starting over with the same size room available to us, we would do exactly the same.
I am happy to talk through this with anyone if they have questions, just PM me.
Best wishes
Ginny
