FINCHforum

Hello. I have one Gould which has undigested seed in her poop. This has been going on for about 2 weeks. Here is what I have tried:
Ronivet-S @ 4x's strength for 4 days; 3 days reg strength.
Water with Sparkle only for 3 days.
Worm Away for 2 days.
Last night I put ACV 1 drop per ounce of water.

No Change, actually the cocks described below look a bit worse.

The hen is fluffed and has been for the 2 weeks. In addition I have 2 males (RH, WB, YB's) that are fluffed for almost the same 2 weeks. They are sleeping most of the day. They too went through the above regiment.

My other 3 goulds are looking good.

Stats: 6 Goulds in an indoor flight which is 2 feet front to back, 3 feet high, a little over 5 feet long. Repti-sun bulbs (4 of them) overhead in a compact flour fixture. Birds R Us pro seeds mixed with Miracle Meal and Herb salad daily (all mixed together). Free choice of Skippio Egg Meal, Hatched Egg Shells & Oyster mixed together, Plate of herb salad by itself, charcoal.

Pro-Bio sprinkled on soaked seed 2's per week. Calcium (normally before they got ill 2 x's per week).

Please Help... As far as I can tell Antibiotics would be the next choice. Don't really want to go there unless I have too. (I have Amoxitox on hand but have never used it). Thank You. -Angela

I am personally battling this with one of my owl finches. I have done as you have dewormed twice (treated with vitalize at the same time), after deworming I continued to treat with Vitalize for 3 days then Amoxitex for 5 (continued vitalize thoughout) then (now)I am treating with probiotics.

The owl seems to consume a lot of seed, he is offered other food egg, veggies fruit. He eats, bounces around, drinks fine but sleeps next to a warming bulb most of the day. The probiotics seemed to pick him up a bit yesterday. There is still a small amount of seed in the stool and it is brown colored. I read that if a bird consumes mostly seed the stool has a brown tinge to it. I also read a while ago the birds that consume to much seed have passed partial of whole seed since they are taking so much of it in that it doesn't digest properly and is based. If that is the case then why all the sleeping?

I started to read and found this about AGY (Avian Gastric Yeast) MegaBacteria. The only symptom mine did not have was loose runny stool and there is no weight loss. The medication to treat AGY is over $100.00, quiet expensive to try when we don't know if this is it.

All the other owls and his mate are fine.

I am going to order Tetratex and see if that helps. Keep in touch with me and let me know how your birds are doing. I have contemplated a vet visit...the bill could run $200 to $300 after tests, visit and meds.

If the meds are this much and its a deterrent to purchase, consider doing a group purchase. Get 2-4 people interested. One person purchases and the others send the purchaser for their cut. When it arrives at the purchasers, they send it out to the others. If you have four people, you are out 25 plus shipping instead of 100 plus shipping.

http://finchfiles.com/FinchFiles/Health ... andida.htm

This article is very interesting and covers apple cider vinegar (claiming not as effective towards yeast infections but helps with ph of the water)...recommends probiotics as a way to "starve" the yeast out. Claiming that yeast infections cause the birds digestive tract not to function well so the bird has a tendency to be in the food bowl more often than normal. This could explain the bird always eating and dropping partial seed in the stool.

The article also speaks about treating with RonivetS (or Ronex) for protozoal.

I am wondering if it would be wise to treat with Ronex and probiotics. My birds are all getting probiotics at the moment...just need to know how long to treat them with probiotics, they are on their second day.

Cindy - I believe probiotics need to be given as long as the antibiotics were given. ie if you gave antib's for 5 days then you should give prob's for the 5 days following.

I'm really glad you posted this now - I've been wondering how they are doing now. Do keep us posted please.

I hope ALL the birds get better FAST.

Thank you for your well wishes Liz. He has perked up some. I did treat with Amoxitex for 5 days. I consulted the company I bought the products from. they suggested deworming twice, once on day 1 and once on day 3. I waited 3 days after that and treated with Amoxitex for 5 days then started probiotics. From the time I started the deworming to the last day of antibiotics they recieved vitalize. I will give them probiotics for 3 more days.

I am debating whether to treat with Ronex and then probiotics again. I am new to all this medication with little birds. anything every went wrong with my Gray, I went to the vets with him.

Anyone care to pipe in? What about Nystatin (Medistantin)?

The owl eats and eats, then sleeps. I put parsley, cucumber and romaine chopped up in the cage and he dove into it. I have other supplemental foods arriving tomorrow.

He may have been stressed from all the traveling to the show, the people and flying to avoid hands catching birds and the ride here and settling in. I heard stress can cause yeast. He has been with us for 2 months or more. Right now he has been in the seed bowl, egg and ground Roudybush cup and veggies. He is not thin or light. No staining on the vent.

I am just puzzled. Chime in...feedback guys!

When I hear undigested seed, the first thing I think of is Avian Gastric Yeast, or Megabacteria.

The only thing that is effective at treating this is Amphotericin-B or "Megabac" which is available through LGF.com I believe as well as FabulousFinch.com but it is VERY expensive and it is VERY hard on the birds - just like this med is hard on humans.

According to Laraine, undigested seed can also be the result of Cochlosoma, Megabacteria, Giardia, Thrush and Gizzard Worms.

If it was Cocholosoma or Giardia, you would think the Ronivet would have worked.

If it was Gizzard worms, the wormer should have helped at least temporarily, though Laraine says there is no real good treatment for them as the only effective treatment available is toxic to Gouldians.
She does say though that unless your aviary is outdoors with direct access to soil it is unlikely they have Gizzard worms.

Thrush (aka Candida, aka Yeast) can be treated with Medistatin or Nystatin. If it is a systemic infection as this sounds, you probably need something stronger like Ketaconazole which you would need to get from a vet as I understand.
I do not think medistatin would be effective enough for a yeast infection which has spread past the crop.
You can also get Flagyl from Siegels Pigeon online, which is another systemic antifungal med but I do not personally know anyone who has used this particular brand.

If the thrush treatment was not successful, you would need to consider the option that your bird is infected with AGY (aka Megabacteria) -
http://finchfiles.com/FinchFiles/Health/Notes-AGY.htm

I have not tried the Ronex or Ronivet yet and not sure if my birds symptoms required it. I may order Medistatin for him, then follow it up with another round of probiotics.

I have ordered 5 lbs of oyster shell, it should arrive today. I am going to offer a dish of this to him without adding mineral block or cuttlebone(that is ground and in a different cup mixed with o.s. in the cage). Maybe the extra oyster shell will help in the digestion of the seed.

I dewormed twice, he did pass long thread like strings the 1st deworming. Giving him Amoxitex was in case he had an infection from the worms, but antibiotics can cause yeast in an already stressed bird. This is so tricky...the Megabac is like $100 and we don't really know if it will do the trick.

I don't think the birds were outside birds prior to me getting them, the breeder had an indoor set up.

Tiffany, thank you for the response to my post. If Medistatin is 'relatively' not harmful then I may try that next. We have a couple of good vets in Las Vegas that specialize in birds. My concern is catching the little guys and transporting them without causing futher damage related to stress.

Maybe another round of Ronivet S at 4x's for the full 7 days + Medistatin?

So the sulfa drugs or amoxi are not going to help I take it?

-Angela

Vaughn19992000 wrote:Tiffany, thank you for the response to my post. If Medistatin is 'relatively' not harmful then I may try that next. We have a couple of good vets in Las Vegas that specialize in birds. My concern is catching the little guys and transporting them without causing futher damage related to stress.

Maybe another round of Ronivet S at 4x's for the full 7 days + Medistatin?

So the sulfa drugs or amoxi are not going to help I take it?

-Angela

If the Ronivet didn't work at the dosages described above for the 7 day original treatment, I can't imagine they would do anything in a subsequent treatment.
Ronivet is really one of those drugs that I feel if it's going to treat the ailment, you will usually see signs of improvement within 3 days after administering it.
If you don't see any improvement after at least 5 days, IMO it's sort of a "back to the drawing board" thing - though I'd still continue the full 7 days unless they'll die otherwise.

If it is yeast, Sulfa or Amoxicillin or any other anti-biotic are just going to make the situation worse, not better.
If there is undigested seed and it is a candida issue, it is probably progressed (I would think) into the GI tract of the bird.

For Medistatin to work, the med has to actually come into direct contact with the organism in order to successfully treat it. This is why Medistatin is primarily most effective for candida (yeast) infections isolated to the crop (also called Thrush or Sour Crop), because you can crop needle the med into the bird and the med will still come into contact with the yeast organisms in the crop wall.

The problem when the yeast spreads further into the birds GI is that the medistatin breaks down once it is in the birds body, and is it not essentially coming into contact enough with the organisms to affect them, which is why you need a systemic medication like Fluconazole or Metrinodazole (sorry if my spelling is atrociously off, I don't feel like googling the proper spelling).

If you have ever had a raging yeast infection yourself (sorry, gross, I know), you may understand better. Typical yeast infections can be treated with OTC products like Monistat because the infection is isolated in the area and the product coming into contact with the organism will successfully treat it.
But with severe infections, you need a systemic/ORAL medication (usually Diflucan) to successfully combat it.

Make sense? :\

Tiffany thank you for all your help. Personally I think it is a stress induced yeast infection. I am going to contact one of the companies and order the medication, meanwhile I will keep him on the probiotics for 3 days with additonal heat.

I was using Advair for trigger asthma (luckily I no longer suffer from that) and got thrush very badly in the back of my throat, it was so painful to swallow anything even water. The doctor gave me Diflucan and it was amazing how well and fast it worked. It stays in your system for days with only one dose.

I called and ordered Ronivet S and Medistantin. I will give the Ronivet S for 7 days then follow it up with Medistantin for 7 days, then probiotics. Hopefuly this will work.

The owl is on it's 4th day of probiotics, this morning he was like a different bird. He is flying back and forth, goining in and out of the nest box, eating eggfood. I am seeing little of the puffing up and sitting there. I did read that probiotics makes yeat unable to thrive, it is starved by the probiotics.

I treated everyone with probiotics. I gave everyone new finely ground mineral block, cuttlebone and oyster shell, bago o' bugs, ABBA92 eggfood with greens.

When the medication comes in I will treat him and his mate with Ronivet S and medistatin. Not sure if I should treat the other pair of owls also, they seem fine.

Afternoon update on my owl.

This is surprising and hopeful. This morning I turned all the cage lights on, my little ill owl finch comes bouncing out of the nest and has been like a different bird all day so far. He has been eating egg food, flying back and forth, hoping in the nest box, spreading his tail and wings. He even bathed in his water (containing probiotics), it was the first time I have seen him bathe in about a week.

He is hopping across the bottom of the cage and singing. I don't remember the last time I heard him sing. I am so hopeful he will pull through whatever he has/had going on.He has more energy than I have seen in a long time. His eyes are bigger and brighter.

Can anyone tell me what the hopping around in the nest box, spreading his tail feathers and wings..is he courting?