Prophylactic Treatment Schedule (mites, worms, coccidia)?

[artgecko]

How often do you regularly treat your birds for mites, worms, and coccidia if you have an established flock housed indoors and not fed live food?

I have read some information regarding dosing with scat for mites every 30 days (on established birds) and this made me wonder if regular prophylactic treatments were the norm or if this was just done in special circumstances.

I've had my birds for a little over 1.5 years and treated for mites and worms when they were in quarantine, but have done no treatments since. I'm wondering if I should start such a routine treatment program and if it would be beneficial.

I'd love to hear what everyone does and whether you think it has been effective or not.

[debbie276]

I definitely would not treat with Scatt every 30 days. It stays in the blood stream for 21 days. ASM have to be transferred from bird to bird so if your not moving birds around, bringing in new etc I wouldn't keep treating. Treating will not prevent ASM it will only treat any mites they may have.
The other issues I would only treat as needed.

[Dave]

I think that some recommendations are to treat every 30 days is because the air sac nymph (larval stage) is not killed with Scatt.

The idea behind treating monthly is to keep killing the air sac mite that developed from nymphs not killed by the last treatment. The nymph can stay dormant until hot weather, stress or some other trigger causes it to become a mite. In other words, you can think you're birds are clear and they'll suddenly have air sac mites again.

I'm not sure how breeders handle this problem, other than by regular treatments. ?

Gouldians, Budgies, Owls and other species are all subject to this mite.

[Sally]

I only do Scatt once, when I bring in a new bird as part of their quarantine, and then never again. l've never had an air sac mite problem.

[artgecko]

Its an interesting topic... My other hobby, keeping reptiles, has its' own parasite issue..namely snake mites. These guys have a similar life-cycle to bird airsac mites.. Different stages, many of which can't be killed.

With reptiles, it is advised to treat while in quarantine for at least 1 month period, maybe longer. When I had a mite issue in my collection I had done this, but still had mites pop up every few months. I eventually gave up on standard treatment (spraying enclosure with PAM a mite-killer and treating the reptile with a safe mite killing topical) and went with predatory mites used in agriculture. After using the predatory mites (live in a soil substrate and hunt mites in the enclosure) I have had no other issues.

I know that is not an option here, as these mites live inside the birds, but because of my former experience, I want to do a protocol that will ensure that I get rid of any mites (accounting for different life stages).

When I quarantined my last group of birds, I did 2 treatment rounds..Once when I got them, then again when I was moving them out of quarantine 30 days later. I have not seen any symptoms since. I was planning on doing the same with these new gouldians, but because I had read of an experienced breeder keeping records of treatments and treating every 30 days, I was unsure.

With coccidia, I believe I had read of people treating on a fairly regular basis (more than once a year) but I'm not sure if they were only doing so due to their birds being housed outdoors, etc.