Hi Vaishali,
There is no way to know for sure, unless the Vet did a necropsy, and even then sometimes the cause of death is a mystery. It is highly unlikely that it is anything she ate. It is possible, but unlikely, that she choked when she vomited – which was more likely regurgitating as birds rarely vomit. Aspirating regurgitated food is possible, but it doesn’t kill a bird that quickly, and she was already in distress before that. Most likely it was related to her egg laying. For each egg she forms, it takes a lot of calcium and protein. This can come from her bones and even affect her organs if her diet is not adequate to support egg laying. To safely lay eggs, she needed to be eating a nutritionally balanced diet like seeds, with fresh foods and an egg food as additional supplements. An egg food is particularly important because it provides extra calcium and protein. Some birds on seed diet manage to lay eggs and do OK, but others do not. When she fell, if she landed hard, especially on the floor or a hard surface, she may have broken her keel(breast) bone which is fatal, or damaged her internal organs. She may have had an egg inside her that ruptured. Unless the Vet did imaging, there is no way to tell for sure if there was an egg inside of her, especially if it ruptured. She started going down from the time she fell, so the best guess is that she suffered some type of serious injury and from that point, there was probably nothing that could be done to save her. It sounds like a combination of an unfortunate accident, and her body being weakened from laying eggs. I’m very sorry for your loss – I know you and your family are heartbroken.
To make sure your other female remains healthy, there are some things you should try to get her to stop laying eggs. In the wild, they only lay egg once a year. In captivity, they sometimes keep paying eggs over and over until it kills them. I don’t know if this was the first time either female laid eggs or if this has been going on. The more times they have laid eggs, the worse their health is getting. But you can make some changes to discourage egg laying.
You need to do all of these things to discourage egg laying. Keep in mind that to lay eggs, she needs longer daylight, warmer weather, abundant food, and a quiet, private environment. Your goal is to reverse these conditions.
Limit her light to 8-10 hours by covering the cage early each evening
Do not give her anything to use as a nest – no bird huts or tents, no box, bowl, etc. If she decides to sit in a food bowl, remove it and replace with smaller cups.
Do not give her anything to shred such as paper or cardboard.
Rearrange the toys in the cage frequently.
Move the cage to a different place in the room. Move the cage about once a week, or whenever she shows signs of nesting – settling on the cage floor for example. This disrupts her idea of having a stable place to lay eggs and raise chicks.
If you feed a lot of fresh foods, stop offering any for a couple of weeks, and then only offer them in small amounts about 2 or 3 times a week. You can resume normal feeding later when the birds aren’t being hormonal.
When she is let out of the cage, do not let her get in any dark cozy places and don’t give her free roam.
When you handle her, limit any petting to only her head and neck – do not pet her on the body. Only a bonded mate is allowed to groom the body. We can’t be a mate, so touching the body is off limits.
If there is no metal floor grate, then do not use any bedding or paper in the cage tray – leave it bare and clean it daily.
Thank you for the updates,
Brenda
