Aussie Finch Forum

Greetings,

Any advice on treatment of cocidioses (going light).?Treatment must not cause infertility.

Euthanasia.

rpetersen wrote:Greetings,

Any advice on treatment of cocidioses (going light).?Treatment must not cause infertility.

Do you have access to"Baycox" or "Coccivet" over there,if so it's 3ml to a litre of water given fresh daily for three days and repeated in a week.I have never had infertility problems with treated birds or birds feeding young whilst being treated. Craig

Thanks Graig. Yes we do have Baycox available. Tx for the advice.

Riyaad

Not a bad idea to completely remove the soil from the bottom of the avairys and burn, then put in fresh soil. More so if you have hookbills.
LML

I have never had problems with coccidisis in Australia but that's a consequence of the dry areas I've lived in. Coccidiosis was a constant threat when I lived in the Philippines - especially for birds that spent a lot of time on the ground like quail. I used to throw my green seeding heads onto the ground and soon learned that presenting them in containers or clips near perches lowered the the incidence of coccidiocsis considerably. Even though I had a completely roofed aviary, coccidisis would emerge every wet season since higher humidity meant that faecal matter took longer to dry out and so the organism survived the passing from resistant birds to infect susceptible ones. Some people recommend the routine addition of coccidiostats (Amprolium e.g. Coccivet or Sulfathiazole) to water but unless you are able to regularly rotate ones from different activity groups you may select for resistance to these chemicals. Birds recover quickly when treated but as I'm sure that you've discovered they die quickly when left untreated. The sickest birds shed the most inoculum so they should be removed from the aviary and treated separately in a hospital cage but the entire aviary should be treated as well as there will be many sub-clinical infections. As was recommended earlier regularly replacing soil/sand on the aviary floor should assist in lowering the incidence of the disease but eliminating it is probably not going to happen so be vigilant.

Well I'm probably going to shake a hornets nest here. What I do personally is to disinfect the the ground with bleach and water solution, bi weekly. I will also spread lime on the ground to asist with drying ground and breaking down wastes. Regards.

PS: I use one of which GregH has recommended, Coccivet (Vetafarm). As they say: a stitch in time will save you nine. Also paying attention to when your birds are stressed helps also.

There are loads of meds avail here for Cocci. Baycox, ESB3 and sulphazine all work well. I've used ESB3 for years preventatively every 3 months or so and not had any issues with fertility. This based on a lack of cocci evidence in any birds examined or post mortem'd by my vet.

If you not got firm diagnosis of cocci and your birds going light you could also try treat for protozoa. Assume you've done de worming.

As Monotwine has suggested your "Going light" could be caused by quite a number of disease causing organisms. In fact I'd be surprised if it was Coccidiosis as this usually causes quick deaths rather than going light.

Other common causes of going light in finches include worm parasites ( gizzard worm, tapeworm), Macrorhabdus (megabacteria), Cryptosporidium ( a protozoan parasite which is very difficult to cure), Mycobacteriosis ("tuberculosis") and a host of other fungal, bacterial, protozoal and even viral infections. Each odf these needs a different treatment. Some are simple to treat; others close to impossible.

If you are having a problem then the best thing to do is have a bird examined and unfortunately sometimes a post mortem with histopathology is required to get the full answer. At the very least have some fresh droppings examined by a vet. This is inexpensive and may give you an answer too.

thanks for the vets angle Myzo
You guys are scary.... ....I live next door to a country vet and he shocks me every time I talk "shop" with him too!
I know you are only sharing your wisdom and experience.
clean, fresh foodstuff's, uncrowded conditions and a little help from mother nature are my cornerstones for avian health.
Only 300mm of rain so far this year here so hopefully its too dry for most of those nasties of which you speak.
excuse my complacency....I am sure many will benefit from your advice.