Mystery Illness attacking my Zebra Finches!

[SparrowKing]

Hello Everyone!

I am a relatively new Finch owner, I got 2 Zebra Finches earlier this year, a male and a female. They promptly had a clutch of 5 beautiful babies, so I now own 7 zebras. I have separated them into two cages, one for the parents and one for the babies. These are good sized cages, 30x20x20 inches. Quite a while after I separated the babies from the adults, momma bird started favoring one of her feet and picking at both of them. I took her to the vet, and the vet was stumped. She thought it might be an egg stuck, but after x-rays that was out.

The vet decided to give her an aggressive treatment: I treated all the birds (including her) for parasites with Ivermectin. As for her, Antibiotics, Anti-inflammatory, and pain killers orally injected twice per day for two weeks, as well as wound flush treatment with hydrogel for her feet twice per day for two weeks. She recovered, but during that time one of her little toes went black and fell off.

Once the treatment was done, a few days later one of the babies started exhibiting the exact same symptoms. Took him to the vet, same thing, same treatment. He seems okay now.

Now it started looking like momma was coming down with it again, and now one of the other babies is showing the same symptoms. I attached pictures I took of his feet to show you. They don't look good.

Is it possible this is a parasitic problem? Did I not clean the cages properly and the bugs came back? This is obviously spreading between the two cages. I have started yet another round of Ivermectin for them because I discovered that I wasn't putting the drops right over their jugular vein, I was just putting them on their skin on the backs of their necks.

I'm really worried about the little baby, I don't want to wait 10 days for the next anti-parasite treatment to discover that he's just getting worse. I don't want the little guy to suffer any more than he has to!

Has anyone ever seen this before? From the pictures can anyone say that parasites might cause the bird's feet to look like this? I really appreciate any help or suggestions anyone might have. I apologize for the long description, I just wanted to get as much detail as possible.

I love my Finches, and I'll do just about anything to keep them healthy and happy!
Thank you everyone!

[lovezebs]

SparrowKing

Welcome to the Forum from Canada.

At the moment, our Forum is undergoing some changes, so regretably your pictures (and our pictures as well) are not coming through.

Here is a link which you might find helpful as in regards to what's going on with your poor birdies feet. Let us know which picture most closely resembles the issue you are having.

https://ladygouldian.com/Foot-Problems

Is the Vet you're seeing an Avian Vet?

[SparrowKing]

Hello,

Thanks very much for your reply. I had a look at the pictures of bird feet from your link and I couldn't really see anything similar, which is good because some of those look terrible. The bird's feet look slightly swollen and cracked, with a small amount of dried blood on one of them.

Yes, the vet is an avian vet, and they seem to have a good reputation here in Montreal. I just spoke to them, and they suggested in the meantime that I use hydrotherapy (cool running tap water) and some Aloe Vera (since I have no hydrogel left) to give him some comfort, and crushed aspirin in his water as an anti-inflammatory.

The prevailing opinion right now is parasites. They are suggesting a 6 week anti-parasite treatment for all my birds as well as some kind of mineral oil treatment on their feet to kill any eggs that might be there.

I hope this works! Any other ideas or suggestions are certainly welcome. Priority 1 for me is that they suffer as little as possible and I get to the bottom of this thing and eradicate it.

[cindy]

let me ask where these birds ever kept outside, exposed to mosquitoes?

The images will not show up for me, can you pm them?

If fungal or staph you can use Hibiclens 4% (chlorhexidine) to wash the feet off with.

[lovezebs]

cindy

We can't post pictures on the Forum now Cindy... .

[cindy]

drat! A picture would help.

Sent a pm to you sparrowking..... asked about mosquitoes, mites both can pass illness. are the feet lumpy, swollen and the tips of the toes black? when one comes down with it do others seem to get it within 10 days or so?

What antibiotic are you using?

[SparrowKing]

I don't know if I can PM, I tried earlier and it didn't seem to work. I'm also new to the forum so I can only PM to FINCHforum staff right now!

[SparrowKing]

Looks like my PM is stuck in my outbox. These birds have never been outside, and I don't think I ever remember seeing a mosquito in my place. The feet appear swollen, dry, and crusty. I treated the momma for two weeks before I noticed one of the babies starting to exhibit the same symptoms. This latest problem started not even a week ago, so it was more than 10 days between the two babies.

[SparrowKing]

Also, the toes are not black, I forgot to mention!

[mick1933]

Hi Sparrow King. My advice is to find a vet somewhere who specialises is birds and get their droppings analyse. That is the only way to really find out if there is anything wrong going on internally. Unfortunately most vets know very little about birds. I use Rob Marshall, a world known specialist in birds. He lives 3 hours drive from my place so I send the droppings to him twice yearly by express post and I can't remember the last time I had any real problems with my birds. If you find out there is nothing going on internally with the birds then you have to think about the environment. If you don't have the droppings analysed then you and the vet are flying blind when it comes to treatment. It is not the cost so much, although that's not much, it is the emotional cost of getting it wrong. Regards Mick.

[SparrowKing]

That's a great idea, thanks so much Mick! I'll see if I can find someone nearby to get that done.

[debbie276]

You said your vet is an avian vet so they should be able to do the dropping analysis for you.
Good luck, keep us posted

[SparrowKing]

I'm going to be seeing the vet soon to treat all the birds with some kind of mineral oil, so I will definitely ask them, thank you!

[cindy]

mineral oil may not be the answer if staph or fungal (chlorhexidine wash might be better) mineral oil will just trap it against the skin, if it is another illness like we discussed in a pm the treatment might be different.... good luck hope they can get to the bottom of this.