Gouldian is shedding feathers...

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H2015
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Gouldian is shedding feathers...

Post by H2015 » Sun Nov 25, 2007 2:06 pm

The first Gouldian I bought (over one month ago) is starting to shed feathers when he's preening.

His diet is good, it consists of seed mix with dry egg food, daily freshly boiled eggs, iodine in the water, vitamins, and the occasional spray millet.

He went through a hard time last week when I started treating for air sac mites, I thought he wouldn't make it but luckily he was the first to show recovery and now he seems totally fine, singing and eating and I even caught him pulling the newspaper off the floor!

My question is, does the shedding mean he's starting to molt?

Cause I'm happy seeing him recovered and it'll be depressing for him to go through more stress with the molt - something I never dealt with before btw. If it is a molt then any tips on how to make it easier would help! :)

Thanks in advance!

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Post by EmilyHurd » Mon Nov 26, 2007 3:00 am

Liquid or powdered kelp can help gouldians while they are moulting. You can usually tell if they are moulting because you see all kinds of missing feathers on their head, and they look very ugly during moulting (in my opinion).

Keep up with giving fresh boiled egg, and maybe even add vitamins to it.

I have owned 6 gouldians in my finch experiences, but currently only own one because I think they are to high maintenance! So maybe some other gouldian owners will have more advice!

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Post by H2015 » Mon Nov 26, 2007 6:42 am

Thanks a lot Emily, I do provide the birds with Iodine in the water which I believe is the same as liquid kelp right?

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Post by Sally » Mon Nov 26, 2007 12:24 pm

Iodine in the water is providing the same thing. I have 5 Gouldians, but certainly don't have a lot of experience with them. I would say that it seems like a strange time to be molting, mine did that months ago, but maybe being sick can trigger a molt--I don't know. There are others on here who know a lot more about Gouldians, so maybe one of them will see your post. I do know that when they are molting, it takes a lot out of them. Your diet seems like a good one, keep up with the egg food, as they need lots of protein when molting. One of the good Gouldian sites for articles is this one: www.ladygouldianfinch.com.

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Post by EmilyHurd » Tue Nov 27, 2007 6:58 am

When my entire flock had air sac mites, all of them were shedding feathers like crazy!! So it could possibly have to do with that. I don't know if all gouldians molt at the same time, but my gouldian molted a couple months ago as well....

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Post by H2015 » Tue Nov 27, 2007 12:02 pm

Oh Emily, the air sac mites could be it then. Cause no pin feathers are visible at all just the shedding. Fortunately though, they're all recovering nicely at the moment, the 2nd treatment has ended :)

Sally, thanks for clarifying. I didn't know that Goulds molt in certain seasons, I thought it could happen anytime throughout the year.

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Post by Sally » Tue Nov 27, 2007 12:47 pm

As I said, I'm not a Gouldian expert, but my understanding is that at the end of their breeding season, they go into their annual molt (which stops the urge to breed). Then once they have molted, they gradually go back into good condition and eventually breeding condition, and the cycle starts all over again.

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Post by rottielover » Tue Nov 27, 2007 3:50 pm

Sally, your correct.

The "normal" gouldian cycle is Breeding -> Molt ->Recovery -> back to breeding... At least that's the simplified version of it.

That's not to say that a molt can't be triggered by other factors, illness is certianly one of those factors.

I can't remember the exact molting order of feathers (that's why I buy books ;) ) but I think it usualy starts with some of the flight feathers followed by body feathers, tail and head feathers (down feathers are continuosly "molted" and replaced). Nature designed the molt so that durring this time the bird is never left completly flightless. If all the flight feathers fell out at once, the bird couldn't fly and would most likely die or be very easy prey (in the wild).

Sounds like a good diet to me, nearly exactly what I'm feeding my Gouldians.

I'd keep an eye on things, if at any point you start to see bare patches of skin showing then I would use that as my alarm bell (start thinking feather/body mites at that point).

In all likelyhood the stress from the airsac mites could have triggered a "mini molt". Once the stressor (airsac mites) is eliminated the bird should begin to regrow the missing feathers.

Keep an eye on things ;)

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Post by H2015 » Mon Dec 10, 2007 8:12 am

Today I see pinfeathers starting to show up around his neck and chest, there were also larger feathers on the bottom of the cage, I'm not sure if this will be a full molt or a mini molt though but it's definitely happening.

Fortunately I ordered Feather Fast from the internet so I'll start using that tomorrow. He's still recovering from the mites and I'll apply SCATT when I get it cause S76 didn't work well on all of them - I feel sorry that he's going to go through double the stress.

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Post by rottielover » Mon Dec 10, 2007 11:27 am

H2015 - Is this one of the birds from your other thread?

I just left you another reply on that thread about the possibility of a bacterial and maybe a yeast infection on that other thread.

I hope we can get all this figured out!!

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Post by H2015 » Mon Dec 10, 2007 3:22 pm

rottielover wrote:H2015 - Is this one of the birds from your other thread?

I just left you another reply on that thread about the possibility of a bacterial and maybe a yeast infection on that other thread.

I hope we can get all this figured out!!
No it's not the same one, I'm sorry if this is starting to become very confusing but to simplify it, I have just four Gouldians and here's the problems they had:

Image

Yellow male: started molting, currently doing better after final S76 dose but wouldn't sing like he used to.

Normal Black male: had mites, after 2nd S76 dose he went light and I treated with Amoxitex but didn't recover and lately started reacting weirdly as described in the other thread. You can tell from the picture he's not alright.

Normal Red male: same as the Normal Black male but the Amoxitex treatment fixed the problem and now he's 100% recovered and sings continuously which is why I suspect that he no longer has mites either.

Normal Black hen: always been the strongest of them all but even though she acts fine she does clicking sounds which is why I need to retreat all of them with SCATT.


Here's a close up of the yellow male that is showing pin feathers:
Image

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Post by rottielover » Mon Dec 10, 2007 3:48 pm

Great! A picture is truely worth 1,000 words :)

Well as much as you can tell from one still shot, three of them are looking pretty good. Having the pin feathers is a good sign, meaning the feathers are growing back in. My guess is a "mini-molt" triggered by the stress of illness.

If you have the ability, I would seperate the Normal Black Male, since he's still showing signs of illness. Any small cage can be converted into a quick hospital cage if you have the means. I've found that seperating out the "sickest" of the flock allows all the birds to heal more quickly. The "sickest" bird get's "special" treatment, in that there is no competition for the water or food dishes and s/he can eat and drink at their pleasure, and the healthier birds don't have any one bird to single out and pick on.

As I was getting at in the other thread, since the anti-biotic doesn't seem to have much affect on the Black head male, you may want to look into the possibliity of a yeast infection (brought about as a 2ndary infection from whatever bactiera got there in the first place).

My logic in this: Airsac mites weakend the immune systems of your birds allowing a bacteria (once suseptible to Amoxitex) to invade. That further weakend the immune systems and possibly allowed a yeast or another bacteria that is not suseptable to Amoxitex to invade your Black Head male.

My understanding is that Amoxitex is based on Amoxicillin. I am not an Avain vet, but have you considered trying a sulfa based antibiotic?

Recently my Gouldian flock started to show signs of illness a few weeks after I had a mysterious death of one bird (he just dropped over showing no symtoms). I put them on a product called "Marvel Aid" (active ingrediant is Sulfadimethoxine) a sulfa based antibiotic.

Marvel Aid is packaged in a drinking solution, and is meant that you replace the drinking water with this solution as the only source of drinking water for 5 days (instructions on package).

After placing the sickest of my flock in a hostpital cage I was able to get him to my Avian vet a 2 days later, and at his exam the Vet said he was in very good health, and he said he could not tell the bird had been sick, other than the symtoms I had described to him. In this case, I basically got "lucky" and whatever infection the bird had was treated with this sulfa based drug.

My avain vet instructed me to keep the entire flock on the medicine for 7 days (instead of the recommended 5) and then to call him with results. After only 2 days on the medicine they are all acting healthy and normal, but I'm going to keep them on the treatment as the vet told me to, since you should always finish out any Antibiotic treatment to prevent "super" strains of bacteria. ( For those of you interested you can get some here: http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/p ... catid=6089)

If your bird has a yeast infection, I do not think this drug will kill them, but I'm not sure, because some other sulfa based drugs have been shown to kill yeast. (Certain Sulfa based drugs are used to treat female yeast infections for example.)

Anyway, I'm pretty much "thinking out-loud" here...

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Post by H2015 » Mon Dec 10, 2007 4:37 pm

Rottielover, I am new to birds so think as loud as you can cause that helps me understand things a million times better. After reading your posts here and in the other thread I now have a much better idea of how to approach this problem as I already tried what I have on hand and none worked so it was a hopeless case.

I'll look up the sulfa based antibiotic and Amphotericin B, will also separate the bird now. Thanks a lot and I'll post if I find any of the meds or if there's any updates.

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Post by rottielover » Mon Dec 10, 2007 5:03 pm

Well I'm just bouncing some idea's out there, trying the follow the progression with as much logic as possible.

To summarize to this point (and please post back and correct if I get anything wrong!):

1) Birds showed symptoms of Airsac mite infection
2) Treatment with S76
3) Birds at first seemed to respond to treatment, but then seemed to get worse
4) Treatment with Amoxitex
5) All but one bird made a full recovery, the one that did not, seems to be "going light" and eating/drinking more than normal.

Asuming the above is correct, we can infer a few things. The birds most likely did have airsac mites to begin with, this was the "trigger". The stress of the mites is known to weaken the immune system, and the mites themselves can carry baterica and I should think yeast as well. Being oppertunistic the bacteria pounced upon the weakened immune systems, causing the symptoms from step 3 above. In turn the weakest bird, probably got another infection of yeast or anothe bacteria that's resistant to Amoxitex. We can infer this because the other birds got better with the use of the Amoxitex, yet this one bird did not.

Thinking out-loud some more, if a vet can do a fecal smear and look at the fecal matter under a microscope, he should be able to find either yeast or baceria that shouldn't belong there (requires a trained eye and the correct diagnostic equipment).

Should the vet find yeast, Amphotericin B sounds like the treatment. If the vet doesn't find any yeast, then we can infer that the bird has something that wasn't killed with the Amoxitex. In that case, we need to change Amoxitex to something else.

I do know that you should not mix antibiotics, so if it's not the yeast, you'll need to ask the Vet when you could start the bird on another antibiotic (sulfa based Marvel Aid or another med) after taking him off the Amoxitex. I would think since finches have such a quick metabolizm that you could change him over fairly quickly, but I'm not sure, hence back to the Vet.

Based on all the avalible information, I think this sounds logical...

I'm hoping that someone that has experianced AGY can chime in on this.

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