FINCHforum

Welcome to the forum Tamara, sorry it is not under better circumstances that you post.

Any chance you have a photo of the 'bugs' in question? Also if you can catch up one of your birds looking particularly affected, blow the feathers under is belly and see if you can find any bugs crawling there. The other place to look is under the wings, on the flight feathers and tail feathers.

Mites sometimes are attracted to water (I use water traps to kill off bran mites in my mealworm farm for instance).
Little white bugs could also be bird lice.
They lay eggs and come back again and again unless you can break their cycle. If you have a real infestation you will have to do multiple treatments to get them under control.

If your birds are itchy irritable and affected by something I'd try Scatt or something administered to the birds via their water that will stay in their blood streams for a while (S76). You will need to treat the aviary with the liquidator remedy too to prevent them using the surrounding aviary environment to proliferate.
You will have to do follow up treatments to get rid of any mites/lice permanently.

To help your birds through this time, offer a heat lamp and give them extra vitamins if you can.

Shame hope they come right soon.

You've gotten excellent advice already from monotwine, I just wanted to add my welcome. There's lots of good reading at www.finchinfo.com, where you will find many articles on diet, housing, etc.

Photos would definitely help, and if it is mites, SCATT or S76 for the birds and Avian Insect Liquidator for the cages should get them under control. All perches, nests, etc, will need to be thoroughly disinfected or tossed. Good luck with it.

Flutterby
Welcome to the Forum, and good luck with your problem.

~Elana~

Eeek....makes me itchy just thinking about it.

@monotwine covered it all very nicely.

Another thought is that mites are generally quite small; most are too small to visualize unless they've been feeding, which makes them red. But you said yours were white, so I imagine they must have been a good size for them to be visible in a water bowl.
Lice are generally a bit bigger and more obvious.

My guess would be that someone bathed in the water and the bugs came off.

There are some good photos of red mites here:
http://birdmites.org/FAQ.html

They can be white/clear and then turn reddish after they bite the host. They're also nocturnal, I believe?

You could also check for feather mites quite easily. Check on the underside of the wing and look at the primary feathers for a "moldy" appearance, like this: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-F4dGksd5ed4/T ... +Mites.jpg

Or this: http://aboutcockatiels.com/wp-content/u ... -shown.jpg

Or hold up a recently-shed flight feather to the light and you'll see something like this: http://ts3.mm.bing.net/th?id=HN.6080241 ... d=15.1&P=0

If you can identify the parasite, you may be more effective in treating it.

I would definitely treat the flock and disinfect the aviary. I would do a second application of whatever product you choose. (Just make note of how long it's effective. If it's good for 21 days, then you'd want to do the second application after 21 days.) That will help ensure that it's killed off completely.

As already mentioned, have you checked the feathers on any of the badly affected birds for signs of mites/lice such as in MiaCarter references ?

Do the birds also bath in the same water ?

Are the mites also around damp areas in avairy away from water, possibly near food ?