I think my cockatiel has conjunctivitis, please help me.

by Bobbi Summers
(New Zealand)

Hi, I have a Lutino cockatiel who is around 2years old (I think) & she has a problem with her eyes. it started a while ago now, they started to look quite red & even cloudy at times. then she started getting red swelling around the top of the eye. it came & went for a while & because Ive never owned a bird before I wasn't sure if this was normal. then just recently it has gotten very bad. she has always sneezed quite a bit but lately shes sneezing a lot more, rubbing her eyes & face a lot & one eye is now almost covered in the red swelling & I tried feeding her a few recipes (puffed rice, she loves them) this morning as a treat but she couldn't even get them out of my fingers as she was at least a cm off. She cant even seem to close her eye lids properly anymore & she seems to have clipped one of her eyes last night as I noticed when I uncovered her this morning that its bleeding or seeping. I'm so worried about her but I just don't know what to do.

I rung the local vet yesterday & I've booked her in this afternoon but her seemed very reluctant to see a bird & the last small animal i took there (our pet mouse) had a rash they could fix so they put him down. I'm so worried that they wont be able to help her or even know anything about whats wrong as most the vets her don't really see birds & I cant find a bird vet anywhere.


I feed her a mix of cockatiel & budgie seed as that's all she will eat & she has fresh water every other day & honey bells & hulled oats & I clean her cage (which is huge) often. She wont go near fresh food at all, she acts as if she is scared of it, i tried for months on end & got no where. I got given her over a year ago now & when I first got her she had been seriously neglected & she was quite ill, she had basically been left to eat her own poo which was a habit that took me a long time to change. But she is now usually healthy & happy. At first she wouldn't go near anyone & she would hiss & try to bite. But now she squawks if I leave the room & gets really excited when I uncover her in the morning. She loves me just as much as I love her & I just want her to feel better again.

I read this morning that I should be putting vitamins in her water? & that it may be an infection. I looked at photos of conjunctivitis & it looks like what she has so I'm thinking it could be that. If so is there something that I can give her that may clear it up or anything that i can do to help her? I'm hoping the vet will give me something but I'm really worried that he wont know how to help.

Any advice or help that you could give me would be a great help, thank you.
Bobbi.