FINCHforum

Starting to get rather concerned about our CFW hen. Miss Olesia has had a wet vent for over two weeks now and we've run out of ideas on what to do for her. She was in with our little black cheek that passed so she's had about a 3 or 4 day dose of antibiotics. After Nika passed, we treated Olesia with the Guardian Angel for 5 days, sprinkled it over some very finely chopped green leaf lettuce. (which she devoured)

There were times she'd look like she was doing better then the next day her entire backside would be plucked and the remaining surrounding feathers would be wet. She has displayed no other obvious symptoms of any kind of sickness. She's been very active with a good appetite. I was hoping the herb salad we just got from Tiffany would help her somewhat but alas, no real improvement as of yet.

She had pounded down the veggies that we've put in her cage, but they have been eliminated for fear that they could be a contributing factor. She hasn't had any greenage for 5 days now and she still has a wet vent. Last night I finally got to see one of her poops and it was mostly liquid. There didn't seem to be any coloration to it at all, almost totally clear, so it doesn’t appear to be a yeast infection.

If anyone has any other suggestions, please pass them along. We were giving serious thought to putting a small amount of bleach in her drinking / bathing water. Has anyone tried this treatment? What would the ratio be?

Thanks
Rory and Sherry

I would probably put some probiotics in the drinking water. Could just be the results of the antbiotic treatment. I would not feed any greens, especially not lettuce. This alone could cause problems. I would offer clean water but would skip the bleach. The bleach would just destroy even more gut flora.(just like the antibiotic does)
Offer Bland diet and probiotics.

Thanks Candace, I do have a follow up question then. Doesn't the guardian angel product have probiotics in it? Or does she just need a stronger dose?

I dont have any ideas to answer your question of what might be wrong,but its 2 drops per litre of water for bleach.I've used it before right after a antibioic treatment,so i dont know if that would help since you stopped the treatment sometime already!I'd say try what candace said and use the probiotic.Also how has her charcoal intake been?

Yes gaurdian angel does contain some probiotics. I would continue to offer the Gaurdian angel in the water for several days. One dose on the lettuce may not have been enough. I will usually run the probiotics for at least 5 days.

Thanks both for your replies. First of all, we've never gotten into the habit of providing charcoal for our Zebras. If it’ll help her I’ll pick some up tomorrow. How do you folks offer charcoal to your birds? In a dish by itself our do you mix it in with their seed or something?

Also that is what is so perplexing about Miss Olesia. We did give her a five day dose of guardian angel on the greens, and that was after we had put it in their water for 3 or 4 days. So in all she’s probably had a ten day treatment.

I offer the charcoal in the same dish as the oyster shell/min/eggshell mix one thing it does it suppose to help draw out toxins and not to be used when the bird is on meds.

Talking over things with the wife and kind of had a revelation. Miss Olesia didn't develop any problems until after we put her in with our new girls. They had been quarantined for a month and everything seemed okay, so we put three girls in with them so they could recover from being plucked. It was not long afterwards that Nika started with her symptoms shortly followed by Olesia. (Nika's symptoms were totally different from Olesia)

While we trying to figure out what was wrong with Nika, it was suggested that she might need to be treated for worms. Nika died before we could explore that option at all so I forgot all about it. But now that Olesia has a wet vent, and another one of the girls we added to the cage had a slight problem as well (she looks better now) I'm starting to wonder. The breeder we got our new girls from does keep her finches in an outdoor aviary, so I'm thinking an infestation is possible.

We've never had to treat any of our birds for worms so would there be any harm in trying something with Olesia? What products should we try and how should it be administered?

Yeesh... I dont have much to offer but intently waiting to hear what others might say.

Best of luck solving this problem

If they were outdoors she could of been exposed to worms, don't know if this would cause the watery ppop? You can use a product in the water called worm out gel from vetafarm.
Could be just stress, change in diet. If the bird was not use to veg, lettuce, then that could of cause all the problems. It has always been recommended to me to not feed lettuce to the finches.

Worms can often cause diarrhea which could lead to a wet vent - I'm sorry she has still not improved, Rory, that is certainly disheartening news (and must be so frustrating for you, too!)

When you say her vent is wet, do you mean it is constantly damp, literally wet looking, or are the poos actually caking/sticking to her vent and they remain wet and sticky?

I don't think bleach would add to the problem unless the problem is yeast. The bleach treatment is what Robert Black recommends for various wet butt problems. The theory being that the bleach will kill both any pathogens in the water, and any pathogens in the digestive tract that might be causing a problem.
Seeing as how the problem is with her butt, the problem is definitely digestive.
At this point I really do not think this is yeast, because with yeast, you would be seeing a steady progression downhill and your bird would be progressively puffy and lethargic.
This leads me to believe it is some other intestinal/digestive bug - possibly protozoal or parasitic, but without a fecal, you can't really be sure.
Ronex is an incredibly safe med IMO and so is Worm Away, the wormer manufactured by Morning Bird.
I guess at this point, my recommendation would be to do a wormer on all of the birds in that cage - it's a one time treatment.
Then put all of the birds on the Ronex/Ronivet-S (I can send you some of this) for 7-10 days at 4x the strength (I have done this more than once and never with any issues and can assure you it is completely safe), then do the wormer again in 3 weeks.
If it's an issue with worms, you also need to totally clean the cage from top to bottom.
I know you also use the open water dishes and this could be exacerbating the issue because the birds can easily defecate in the water - reinfecting themselves and infecting any other birds sharing the cage (and water) with them.
Is there any way you can get some of the 2 ounce or 3 ounce tube waterers?
This way they can't bathe/poop in the water?

Sorry started this post about 5 hours ago but got sidetracked. Had to catch 16 birds and get them ready for the trip to the pet store this weekend. Only had one escapee. Kaleo gave us a scare but we were able to round him up after a couple minutes and stick him back in.

As for Olesia's wet tushy, the few feathers that are remaining are slightly caked with fecal matter. But mostly the area around her vent has been plucked. I just saw her go again (5:00 PM) and it was a lot of liquid although there was a decent amount of fecal matter mixed in.

Yes we are extremely frustrated, especially after trying so hard to help Nika. And what is even worse is now the other plucked girl in the cage (Lyric) is favoring her foot. No idea what happened to her. She doesn't seem to be able to bend her one toe and is really having a hard time perching all of a sudden. I assumed it was just an injury but is there a possibility that this is all connected somehow?

We just took all four girls out and placed them in another cage last weekend. But I guess if one of them is infected, they would have carried it over to the new cage. What's odd is the two "new" girls that Olesia and Lyric are with are fine. If they would have infected our plucked girls, wouldn't they have symptoms of some sort?

Thanks Candace, we were unaware that there could be a problem feeding the finches green leaf lettuce, and will not do so in the future I don't think that's at fault though with Olesia. She already had poopie problems prior to the lettuce and we gave it to several other cages at the same time without any problems.

Thanks everyone for your assistance. Hopefully we can figure this thing out before Olesia starts going downhill.

I don't have any answers for your questions, but I am sure wishing you the best of luck.

Okay new development. Just observed Miss Olesia chewing on her foot. It looked like she was just peeling away some flaky skin, but right now I'm overly paranoid, especially with Lyric and her bum foot.

Could she have some kind of mites, and then buy chewing at her foot, ingesting the parasite and thus cause her wet vent?

This is just so frustrating. We feel so helpless that we can't figure this out. All I know is that ever since we've brought those new girls home we've had nothing but problems with our flock. So I'm going to have to guess that they brought something along with them.

Hopefully whatever it is, it's just confined to that cage cause we're taking young 'uns to the pet store on Saturday and if they test positive for anything they won't accept them. We definitely don't have room to keep 16 more finches.