A blue princess, a ringneck and a cockatiel from the same aviary were bought in for post mortem. All had died suddenly with no apparent cause.

At post mortem they all had severe gout!

Gout in birds commonly occurs after kidney shutdown. When the kidneys stop working the urates (the white part of the droppings) can’t be passed and builds up in the blood. From the blood it moves out to cover the surface of the internal organs, including the heart and liver. The birds die rapidly from heart and liver failure. When you open them up the internal organs are covered with a white urates – nothing else does this.

Usually the kidneys are affected by an infection in the blood or from a toxin. In this case there was no evidence of infection and the laboratory has suggested we look at “water, temperature, feed, treatment”. Careful questioning of the owner could not shed any light on the cause, nothing seemed abnormal.

We still do not know what caused the deaths as feed and water seem fine and nothing was being treated at the time. This one must go into the mystery bag!