Diseases That Result From Poor Nutrition in Birds

"Some examples of some disease conditions that might occur if a bird has poor nutrition are calcium related," says Sarah Kolb, RVT, VTS-CP (Exotic Companion Animals), primary care and exotics technician at the Lloyd Veterinary Medical Center at Iowa State University.

"If you have a reproductively active bird they need to have enough calcium in their diet to be able to make the eggshells and and go through the reproductive process, like they normally would. If they're on a seed diet for example, seed calcium content is less than 1 percent, so, that's not nearly enough calcium for what it takes to make the shell of an egg. Another example would be vitamin A, if they have a hypovitaminosis A that's going to affect their regeneration of epithelial cells, so you're going to see things in the mouth like blunted choanal slits, things of that nature, which is going to affect respiratory illnesses they'll get ill easier, because they don't have that protection against possibly invading bacteria."