Grindelia, Sundew & Calendula to treat respiratory illness

[cuillinmoon]

Hi everyone

Further to my previous post 'Adverse reaction to Scatt by my Gouldian', here's what is helping Io now.

After trying various nutritional/supplement approaches, as suggested by the good people of Finch Forum, my Gould was still poorly and although singing all day, he wasn't flying at all and had started to beak breathe every time anything stressed him out or he was frightened (he'd become more easily frightened because he couldn't fly away, if he needed to, so I think he was feeling a bit like a sitting duck - or gouldian!). The beak breathing and tail bobbing were getting worse and his heart was still visibly pounding.

So I started looking into herbs and got a book called 'Easy Breathing' by David Hoffman (I have his herbal and have found it to be invaluable). The 2 herbs that struck a chord with my bird were Grindelia and Sundew.

Hoffman says that Grindelia is good for asthma and bronchial conditions, especially those where there is a fast heart beat and nervous response, as it relaxes the smooth and cardiac muscles. I took 'nervous response' to mean asthma or respiratory illness which is related to an emotional response, such as fear in a bird who can't fly anymore, so has no means of escape - this was when the beak breathing was worse.

Hoffman says that Sundew is good for asthma, bronchitis and respiratory infections, having a relaxing effect on involuntary muscles. It also contains plumbagin which can be active against Streptococcus, Staphylococcus & Pneumocococcus.

I combined these two herbs with Calendula, which is highly anti-fungal (in case it was a fungal infection) and Echinacea to stimulate Io's immune system.

I've also been making up some garlic water, adding a few slices of a garlic clove to a glassful of water, letting it soak overnight, and then putting one drop of this into Io's drinking water. Garlic is anti-everything, anti-fungal, anti-viral, anti-bacterial, anti-paracitic and so on.

As I didn't know precisely what was wrong with Io, using all of these herbs provided a multi-faceted approach, being anti-asthmatic, anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and anti-viral.

Anyway, within a couple of weeks, Io was starting to bounce around his cage again. Then he started flapping his wings, as if he was testing them out. During this time, the beak breathing stopped completely and after 3 wks, he started to fly, just one lap on the first day, but building up to several laps during the course of a day. The tail bobbing reduced and his heartbeat slowed down and is only just visible now.

Last week, I stopped the herbs for 2 days and there was a deterioration in his activity and he stopped flying, so I've put him on a maintainence dose for the time being and his level of activity continues to improve with no beak breathing.

Well, I thought I'd share this with you all, as respiratory illness is such a common problem in our birds and they go down so quickly when they catch something, so hopefully having this info to hand will be helpful and prevent other birds from being ill or worse, dying.

Dosage:

To 4 liquid ounces of water, I added 1 drop of each herbal tincture and 1 drop of garlic water.

I increased this from 1 drop to 4 drops over a period of 8 days, in order to gauge any negative reaction to these herbs, but there wasn't any.

I also added 1 drop of Hawthorn tincture to the water, to support Io's heart, as it's a great heart tonic, and continued supplementing with Thrive and Iodine.

I was able to find hawthorn and echinacea as an alcohol-free tincture made by Nature's Answer and sold by Baldwin's Pharmacy (http://www.baldwins.co.uk). With the other tinctures, to remove the alcohol before adding the tincture to Io's water, I put the drops into a separate glass and poured on a small amount of boiling water, to make the alcohol evaporate. I got the Sundew and Grindelia from Bristol Botannicals (http://www.bristolbotannicals.co.uk)

[CandoAviary]

Great information, thanks for sharing

Great that Lo is back to feeling well and active!