A little worried!

[anniehilly]

I have two zebra finches, Fred and Ethel. I noticed about a week or two ago that Ethel has a habit of using her legs and itching under her wings quite frequently. About this time she started losing feathers and now has some pretty bare patches right underneath her wings towards the front of her body. Fred's legs appear kind of dry and scaly and he is itching and pecking at them quite often, however his feathers and beak look just fine. I bought a mite and lice spray at the pet store and put them in a smaller cage to treat them and so I could take them to the vet if necessary in the next day or two. I cleaned their cage, perches, toys, etc. really well in hot bleach water and also treated them with the mite-killer spray as directed. However, I haven't seen much of an improvement. I am rather new at caring for birds, having just purchased these two in July of this year. After doing some reading I am starting to wonder if something else is wrong instead of mites. Any ideas? It's under 20 degrees in the daytime right now so I am worried about transporting them to the vet so I thought I'd see if I get some responses here and phone the vet.

Thanks!

[akidsgal]

If it were me I would get SCATT from one of the suppliers. It is a more expensive treatment but buying at petstores most of the time is a waste of money in my eyes. I have not gotton one good treatment from a pet store. Taking them to the vet.... warm car up, cover cage, they will be fine. I wouldn't probably do that either. I have found that the people here are more informed on more things... This is just MY experience. Finches are small birds, and most vets usually care for the large ones. SCATT will take care of both scaly feet and mites. I am NOT too experienced with Zebra's as mine were never ill. I was fortunate. However my Gouldians.... I have gotton the best info from people here!

[Finch Fry]

I will echo Carol with most everything said.

Make sure to warm the car up first and then just wrap a towel around the cage while you transport to car if you have to go outside. You wont have a problem.

Look through old posts you will find a lot of useful information. Its a tad time consuming to wade through the piles of useless chatter that happen in the posts but you will learn a lot too.

One suggestion to do in the meantime that is quite inexpensive is to grab some petroleum jelly or vaseline (same thing) and grab a cotton swab and generously apply some to the spots that seems to have a problem (do it every day before they go to sleep for about a week or so). If its mites, it can suffocate them, if its something else, it can soothe the spot and/or prevent the bird from agitating the spot further until you perhaps get some Scatt or decide on another course of action. But from what you have written, sounds like mites/lice. The spray is pretty crappy so the vaseline trick will probably show results fairly quickly.

[Ursula]

I don't quite agree that NOT going to the vet is a better option, especially when you're not experienced.

It's best if you can find an avian vet but rather than doing nothing Id also go to one who's not so experienced with small birds. I am fortunate to have one close by and she treated my budgies very successfully for scaly mites. I am sure it was more expensive but rather than having to treat them daily and handle them myself (and fearing to be clumsy and hurt them) they got shots from the vet 3 times once a week and were rid of them for good.

[anniehilly]

Thanks for the advice! I'll look into the Scatt and in the meanwhile I'll try the Vasoline. I may still make a visit to the vet, but there aren't any specific avian vets in this particular area unless I want to drive for an hour into the city. Hopefully the problem will be resolved soon.

[L in Ontario]

Not to 'knock' any vets but the ones in my area don't know squat about finches (sorry but true)!

I agree about applying a thin coating of vaseline (or Polysporin) to the feet and legs to smother any possible mites and / or to give a bit of relief from having overly dry skin if no mites are present. I just did it yesterday to a couple of my finches and it really takes less than a minute.

[anniehilly]

I did the vasoline but I'm not sure how well they got coated. I may have to do it again when I have someone else to apply while I hold the finch. Hopefully what I did do helped.