Swee's

Carmen · Post by **Carmen** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 2:18 pm

Hi Hilary,

Wow where are you getting new Swee's from??
Here they have bcome very very rare, since the importban.

I'm still having one male.
The other one was one day healthy, the other day he was dead...
The bird was only 2 years old and seemed to be perfectly healthy. The same bird has had a strange thing when I was on holiday. My sis found him laying on his back. She put him in a small box in the cage with water and food nearby and he became healthy again. Untill two months ago or something, when he suddenly died.

The balancing issue. The birds aren't the most stressed ones, but when replacing them, they can show illness they were before the remove able to hide for you. Possible.
Am I remembering correctly you have had another bird having the same problems with balance???
I should worry, Yellow Bellies are birds who become easily ill.
I've experienced that and look where I'm now, just a single male left

My first birds had a bacterial infection, my second hens a fungual...

With nine birds I would seperate the one with having the balancing problems and take some fresh poops and let it examine on different kinds of diseases. It's worth it in my opinion.

Maybe they have the same attack mine had, I asked my sister and she said that the bird was not able to fly for awhile and was panting a lot.
But all the same, I would worry if it looks like the same thing as your hen had, because she died...

But to come back to my own YB's, later this year I will probably get a new hen from England. I'm looking forward to have a nice pair again.

I am hoping you will take my opinion in acount.

Post by **Hilary** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 2:36 pm

Thanks Carmen, and congrats in advance for the new hen! I found my new ones in San Diego (and I live in Virginia, on the other side of the country). I should be getting a microscope today or tomorrow, so will check poop and see if there's anything to see. I did have the hen with the balancing problem, though once she got sick she never got better. This cock acts strangely, then goes back to normal. Very strange. The hens seem to be very prone to eggbinding (though that could be because I can't make them stop laying eggs, and they don't seem to want to eat the eggshell I provide), but I know this last bird was a male so that can't be it. Sensitive little buggers....

I'll let you know if I see anything with the handy-dandy microscope.

Carmen · Post by **Carmen** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 2:44 pm

OK Hilary,

I'm not sure you can see such diseases that easily, I have to check my book.
I've done it once with my YB's, but never tried it myself, I've let it done by a vet.
He could only see coccidiose, other bacterial infections and viruses are more difficult to see; you have to 'breed' the virus or bactery before you are able to conclude something.

Crystal · Post by **Crystal** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 11:22 pm

It helps to float feces in some cases, to make a direct smear in others, and to stain the slides in still other cases before trying to view them.

Not all diseases will show in the feces, of those that do (typically intestinal bacteria/yeast/parasite eggs), some are only intermittently shed.

It can also be a challenge to correctly identify 'bugs' that are there, and to avoid labeling mere debris as "something pathological." Poop is full of a lot of suspicious looking debris, especially to the untrained eye. Bacteria and yeast typically require a culture to identify the exact type/species.

Being an experienced/trained tech always helps! As does having a reference manual for avian parasites etc. in front of you. Having a high quality scope is also really beneficial. I have a kind of cheap microscope at home and it PALES in comparison to the really high-end models we have at the vet school. It's better than nothing, though.

I want to start submitting bird feces for fecal electron microscopy (which can see very tiny things like viruses etc.). It is a subsidized procedure so it can be done inexpensively (ordinarily is very expensive), but finding a facility to do it may be tricky (lucky for me our campus has one). I just need to find out the details about preparing the sample for submission. Supposedly it is a great way to screen for a lot of diseases because it catches a lot of the things ordinary microscopes miss. I think it could be really handy to incorporate into a quarantine program.

Post by **Hilary** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 11:35 pm

Lucky you, Crystal, to have that subsidized procedure available! I'm getting the entry-level microscope - I just couldn't justify the price of a really nice one when I don't know what I'm doing yet! I figure that any info I get from it will be info I didn't have before, right?

Crystal · Post by **Crystal** » Sat Mar 24, 2007 12:34 am

I think owning your own scope is great, and fun. The more tools, the better, in my opinion (as long as you realize the limitations involved--i.e. that slides which appear normal may not actually BE normal, and that you should always get anything suspicious confirmed by a lab or a vet etc.).

Don't quote me on this yet, but I am pretty sure fecal electron microscopy is available to anyone who can ship in a properly-prepared sample in a timely fashion to a lab or facility that runs them. I'll try to track down the details on it (cost, preparing samples, how viable samples are after shipping, etc.)--I'm hoping it will turn out to be something where you send in feces and get the results sent back for a reasonable cost.