Ivermectin x 3 weeks... Now what?

[jhorch]

Hi everyone,

I've been struggling with what I believe is air sac mites. I first noticed symptoms in an orange cheek waxbill hen and have since noticed all my birds scratching at their ears and excessivly wiping their beaks (yes I've heard clicking in several a well). This despite being in different cages and even different floors in the house. I wasn't vigilant at the beginning about running the food dishes through the dishwasher but even so I wasn't using the upstairs dishes for the downstairs bird cages.

First I tried just treating the orange cheeks with Ivermectin and pulled them (they were with one other pair). The symptoms improved a bit and then came back. Then I noticed beak wiping with the birds they were in with originally (now alone). Then I had a friend over who heard the clicking in several of the other birds.

I eventually broke down and went to the vet with my cockatoo when I noticed her sneezing. The vet's answer was "I have no idea why your parrot had a sneezing fit yesterday." I hadn't finished 3 weeks treatment for the orange cheeks at that point and decided I would bring the hen in if the symptoms weren't resolved the following week.

Her response after examining the bird was "I can't find anything but based on your symptoms you should be treating with Ivermectin" ( duh ). I have since been dosing every bird in the house (cept the parrot) b/c I wonder if they are just infecting each other (remember different cages and every day dishwasher for the dishes). I also started doing the same with the perches and spraying down the bottom of the cages with mite spray as well.

Well tomorrow is 3 weeks. Still scratching at their ears and head, beak wiping, tail bobbing, etc. One male's song is gone - he tries poor thing and nothing comes out - no improvement for him at all. I'm at my wits end and don't know what the next step is. I thought about trying a different vet. I've thought about trying some sort of antibiotic to treat secondary infections. I've thought about trying SCATT instead in another week. I just don't understand how it could be ASM if this treatment isn't resolving it.

Any other ideas? I noticed some of you have treatment protocols for new birds and thought I could just start running through one of those trying to eliminate possibilities one by one.

Anyway - thanks for reading.

Jenny

[monotwine]

Scatt is really easy to use, but you must do the follow up treatment for it to be effective.

Sounds like you trying your best to beat this. Perhaps it's just a very persistant strain of mite.
I'd be loathe to start throwing medication at birds which are other wise healthy though. If you've had them for some time and they remained healthy without quarantine, then so long as you do your basic deworm, coccidiosis and mite treatments then you should have healthy birds.
Ask your vet if s/he feels you should do a treatment for a secondary infection perhaps caused by the ASM.

[waxbill lover]

Jenny,

I would suggest that you try the SCATT treatment, instead of ivermectin. SCATT is very easy to apply (as per prior comments). Just make sure you follow the directions on the bottle.
Also, I can't help but wonder if your birds have feather mites instead of air sac mites. (Due to the itching/scratching) If you are able to examine the primary flight feathers on your birds, you may see some fraying and almost be able to "see through" where these mites have eaten away the feathers... kind of hard to tell, unless you hold a perfect feather up to a damaged feather, and compare the two.

In either case, the SCATT and Ivermectin should be helping. What kind of bedding do you use for your birds? What brand of food do you feed? Veggies/fruit/eggfood? Have they moulted yet? Are your birds under artificial lighting? Are they provided bathwater, or do you use waterbottles/tubes? I have found my waxbills get very scraggly looking and scratch a lot if they are not given adequete FRESH bathwater everyday.

[Cath1068]

I too had your same problems and I was treating mine with s76 ( ivermectin) and got no results. I ordered scatt from larainne and dosed everyone and within 3 days all were well again. I believe scatt is moxidectin and for me it worked like a champ.

Cath

[kenny66]

I use Moxidectin only (scatt) and it works 100% of the time. Could I suggest you just step back a bit and review whats going on. My experience is that it is very difficult to transmit ASM between cages of seperate birds. Unless you are using infected perches between the cages such infection would be unlikely. ASM is usually a bird to bird transmission and does not survive very well outside the respitory system, although limited transmission does occur by beak wiping from birds in the same aviary. Tail bobbing is symptomatic of number of illnesses although the clicking is specific to ASM. I would use scatt and if that does not solve your problem I would move onto the qurantine regime of Moxidectin-Baycox and Ronidizole. Secondary infections from ASM do uccur but you must follow the moxidectin treatment first. Scratching around the face may be unrelated to ASM although the ivermectin should have cleared up any other parasites. I would use the Scatt first. If that doesnt resolve your issue then it definitely something else. Hopes this helps.

[dan78]

Firstly you are using ivomec which should help the problem but it can take a bit of time. Is the ivomec your using cut with alcohol? Are you putting it in the drinking water or applying directly to the bird?
I would take the suggestions as to using scatt, I wouldn't be trying to add extra medications on top of this yet as to many meds can counter act the meds or poison your birds.
If it is a mite infestation I would coopex the cages to and try and kill any excess mites that have left the host as well as change perches daily wash coopex them replace next day, when using coopex remove all birds from the cage your spaying and replace back when dry.
If there are underlying issues as well then they can be tackled after the initial problem. Yes a good parasite regiem will help keep these down to a minimum.

[jhorch]

Hi everyone - so great to have feedback from other birders - the vet was SO not helpful. I was talking to a pet store owner who suggested 2 other vets and also found her not helpful. She was at the avian and exotic clinic so I thought she'd be the one.

In terms of more background details - The birds are otherwise healthy. I've also wondered about feather mites. I bought a sprayoff a friend - Pestex - but it wasn't a new bottle so I don't know. I sprayed the upstairs birds once and did a week of spraying the downstairs cages daily but not the birds - I was too scared to spray the waxbills. Regarding bedding - I use paper towels changed daily downstairs and newspaper (there is a bottom grate with them) changed 1-2x a week. I just use bagged finch seed (Hagen?) and then give veggies every second day or so (carrot, broccoli, lettuce), meal worms - almost daily, and egg shell. Sometimes I give them boiled egg but not regularly. They for the most part bath in their water dish which is quite big. I'm trying to not have too many dishes or things to clean. They have daylight. The ivermectin is cut with alcohol or an oil base I think - the vet did it. It's applied to the skin behind the head.

The suggestion to step back is a really good one - hence my post. It just doesn't make sense that they aren't improving to me. I keep thinking whatever it is has to be airborne - b/c it's transferred floors and across the room to my parrot. Honest - her sneezing is just not normal.

Sounds like the consensus is SCATT. So today I do my last ivermectin treatment. Can I do SCATT next week already or do they need a break? Does ivermectin treat feather mites then? I'll examine them carefully today when I treat. I also think I should do the mite spray. I'm just so scared I could kill the birds with it. Coopex I think is in AUS. What's the next best thing here in Canada? After that I will try a quarantine regime. Will figure out what that should look like later - One step at a time I guess.

Again - thanks SO much for your help
Jenny

[kenny66]

I would sop the ivermectin and scatt them next week. Forget about all that you have done before. Use the scatt at the recommended dose for either direct to the beak or in water. This will kill most worms (we have moxidectin plus here which does tapeworm as well) including ALL feather born parasites.Clean the perches thoroughly. ASM is not a particularly viable airborne cross infection mite as far as I know. I do not believe that you could have infected all cages with it under the circumstances you describe. As I said earlier, scatt first then review. BTW I have brought in many birds into my aviaries. During their quarantine period of 6 weeks some have developed/carried ASM, some with quite heavy infestations. I have never ever had a case of ASM jumping from the quarantine area into the main aviaries by any means. It seems therefore that cage to cage transmission in your context would be highly unlikely

[jhorch]

Thanks Kenny - will pick up Scatt on the weekend. I so hope it works

I attached a few pictures of my birds feathers in case it clarifies anything. I think they might have mites - I don't really know what I'm looking for. I noticed a couple birds had broken feathers (not mites I don't think - what causes that?). A couple were missing secondary feathers which sure looked terrible (the cordon blue's ends were broken too in that picture). Would that be due to moulting or picking at mites? Then some were missing parts of the feather the thin top edge of some of the primary feathers. I thought I saw it look more translucent in the feathers closer to the body which I felt more confident was due to mites (no picture of that).

Thanks again for all the advice everyone!

[kenny66]

Mid molt can produce a rather tatty/irregular feather pattern. As I said eliminate those problems that we think it is. The Scatt will get rid of mites including feather mites. Somewhere on this site a person posted a response to me about the equivalent US product to the insecticide Coopex, which has a residue of 3-4 months and is safe for birds. I will try and find it. If it is mites, if you treat the birds and Coopex the cages, you will break any cycle of infestation. Its no point in me getting over complicated with mite life cycles at the moment. Lets just treat the birds and the cages and go from there. I will run off now and see if I can find that post on Coopex. take care

[debbie276]

I believe either Pestex or Avian Insect liquidator would be the equivalent to Coopex. They both have Permethrin as their ingredient.

[jhorch]

Thanks so much Debbie and Kenny

[DanteD716]

I may be late, but I reccomend scatt

[jhorch]

Hi everyone,

I'm not sure if it's better to start a new post or revive this old one. At least with replying to this you get the backstory...

I did my second dose of SCATT a week and a half ago and noted that my cordon blue male (he got away from me and got a fair bit of exercise) still was clicking like crazy despite my using the SCATT on him 21 days earlier. My thoughts are that this would go away if it was actually treated no? Does the clicking continue on even if the mites are dead?

I also note the head scratching and weird beak motions (mostly opening their beak & "tasting" motions) continue to a small extent. I suppose it's possible they still have feather mites and I didn't get all of them b/c some remained on the birds (although I completely sprayed down their new aviary with Pestex and Virkon). I have to say I have been away for 2 weeks in the last 3 so having time to watch them has been a bit of a challenge. The only other thing I've noticed is my chocolate society seems to be sleeping a lot. The one male still can't sing. Otherwise they are just normal birds.

In my last post I said my next step after this was to find some other regimen to work though slowly to try to eliminate other possible causes of the symptoms. I think Kenny suggested Moxidectin-Baycox and Ronidizole. Does anyone have a suggestion of what to try? Gary - you sent me your protocol with NV, Baycox, Ronex / Ronivet-S, and Worm-Away... What does NV stand for? and I noticed you also do a mite/lice spray. Which do you use?

Sigh... I was so hopeful that I would finally have been able to move on and solve this problem. I sure hope I figure this out before there are any casualties.

Jen

[debbie276]

I would consider that what your bird has is a respiratory infection and not mites if the mite treatment did not cure them.