When buying a bird from a pet store you may notice that some pet stores guarantee that the bird does not have psittacosis. This is a disease that involves the digestive tract of birds and is communicable to humans and occasionally has fatal effects.
Psittacosis is a disease that is often called parrot fever or chlamydiosis.
It is a disease that is relatively common and highly contagious disease among pet birds. It is most common in birds illegally smuggled into the United States. Stress caused by crowding, drafts, and shipping will lower resistance to disease. This is why newly acquired birds are at a higher risk of developing the disease. The name of this disease comes from the word psittacidae, which is the name of a family of birds in which parrots come from.