Some months ago I lost about 10 young budgies over a period of about 2 weeks, just being found dead for unexplained reasons in the mornings. All my 10 aviaries are outside. As one aviary was larger than the others I decided to move all my babies that could feed themselves to this aviary and place all the older birds elsewhere. This particular aviary is about 15 years old and had the weather side covered in a paneling called 'Nutec' on the outside of the usual weldmesh wire and was painted about 12 years ago with green acrylic paint. No trouble until a few months ago! when babies started to die.

Being completely puzzled I took the first three babies for a postmortem to the 'Provincial Veterinary Laboratory, Dept. of Agriculture, Western Cape Govt. in Stellenbosch.

The first two were completely dead and the third was partially paralyzed. The report came back as lead poisoning !!! The third one had an inflamed brain which was indicative of lead poisoning! All the three were found to be in good physical condition with sufficient body fat etc. and no sickness from viruses.

The thing to note here is that baby budgies are very inquisitive and these little buggers had been putting their heads through the weldmesh wire and had been nibbling on the 'Nutec' paneling painted with this 12 year old acrylic paint from where they got sufficient lead from to poison themselves. Maybe the older paneling had something to do with it as well, I am not sure. Asbestos ? not in the current 'Nutec' product/formula.

Beware there is no lead content in material one uses in ones aviaries. We are all aware that lead in paint was outlawed some 5 or 6 years ago but I found out from a paint expert that acrylic paint did contain lead in the past.

One thing about this operation is that the postmortem exercise cost only R110. !!!

Aviary now has corrugated iron in place of the 'Nutec'.

The question we need to ask ourselves is "Are the 'toys' that one places in aviaries for the birds to play with, painted with lead free paint??"