Symptoms develop 4-8 hours after exposure and include a cough, labored breathing, fever, and chills. If exposure is stopped at this point, no treatment is needed. The individual will return to normal. Chronic, low grade exposure is much more serious. Symptoms may be masked or mistakenly diagnosed as a cold or flu.
Affected individuals exhibit a chronic non- productive cough, exercise intolerance, and weight loss.
Permanent pathological lung lesions may develop, including pulmonary lung fibrosis, leaving the individual scarred for life. Chronic allergic alveolitis can develop in as little as 2 years, although most people take 10-20 years to develop this severe form. The disease may be precipitated through exposure to a single budgerigar, and seems to have little correlation to the number of birds kept in the household. One budgerigar owner suffered from a recurrent influenza like illness that occurred every other week. The clinical signs were eventually linked to the biweekly cleaning of bird cages.