PBFB

Psittacine Beak and Feather Disease (PBFD) is a disease of parrot species. It is caused by psittacine circovirus (PCV) that is usually spread from feather dust, faeces (droppings) and crop content.

PBFD is highly contagious and can be fatal to birds.

APV

Avian Polyomavirus also known as APV is a deadly infection that affects many of the bird's body parts and organs simultaneously. This infection affects caged birds, especially those from the parrot family.

Young birds from new born to juveniles (14-56 days), are the birds most at risk and is usually fatal.

Avian PBFD & APV Tests

Parrot breeders especially are encouraged to get their parrots examined to ensure they are free of the diseases before introducing them to other birds.

Many avian species are considered sexually monomorphic. Monomorphic birds lack prominent gender differences in body size and feather coloration.

Vent sexing, laparoscopy, steroid sexing and karyotyping are methods commonly used for sex identification in monomorphic birds. Not only are these methods unreliable, time-consuming and costly, they can be stressful or even life-threatening for birds.

DNA sexing test is a molecular technique to detect the presence of different sex chromosomes found in the bird DNA sample which can be blood spot, feather or egg shell. DNA sexing offers a fast, reliable and accurate method to determine the gender of the bird with minimal invasion.