Air Sac Mites

Is your finch sick or not well? Find out why.
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BluJay

Fincho162, they all made it through the second treatment, with the moxidectin. However, the birds in question appear to have started moulting, wether, this is they are not rubbing themselves, allowing for feathers to grow, or are getting healhier and can moult, I cannot address. Two of them around 2:00am, were on their sided at the bottom of the flight cage they are in. I put in incubator, and treated wtih coccivet, via eye droper, doing so through the morning. 4:30am, began treatment of all birds, except those nesting (which are in a different flight cage). 3:00pm placed the two back in flight from which they came. Seem to be doing well, though I will say they are awful ugly at the moment. hope, I can get this cleared up in the next couple days, if not, hope hubby will come here to have you help him through it.
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VinceS
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Location: Newcastle

I will just add to this useful discussion that the info on the auspigeonco.com.au which you can't get to without a log on can be accessed directly via the below link so at least you can see what the medications are. Obviously proper contact with the vet is needed to purchase them, which I have just done - but you can find out what the deal is for the various medications so you are not going in "blind".
http://www.auspigeonco.com.au/order/ord ... tions.html

I figured this out by using a rather useful search tool that works in lots of places, namely:
https://www.google.com/search?q=moxidec ... nco.com.au

You find this:

Moxidectin (2mg/ml)
ACTIVE CONSTITUENT: Moxidectin 2mg/ml
USE: Parasites
DOSE: 5ml/litre

Quantity Price
125ml $25.00

Moxidectin Plus
ACTIVE CONSTITUENTS: Moxidectin 1mg/ml, Praziquantel 18.8mg/ml
USE: Parasites incl Tapeworm
DOSE: 5ml/litre

Quantity Price
125ml $30.00
Some days are Diamonds some days are Zebs. Sometimes the coccidiosis won't leave me alone. Sometimes a cold wind blows a chill in my Gouldians. But any day with my finches is a day without stones.
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VinceS
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Location: Newcastle

Oh, and because Fincho didn't actually put up his procedure (on account of forgetting where it is), it is below. This comes from http://www.finchsociety.org/fsa/question.htm and, while you are looking, this fine gentleman has put down a lot of his very useful experience here http://www.cliftonfinchaviaries.org/articles.html and there is lots of good info there, thank you Fincho for being such a good sharer.

However, worms and worming is one of my fetishes so here goes!! I gather you have Ivomectin?? If you have the sheep and goat strength one add 3.1 mls of Ivomec to 25mls of isopropyl alcohol (from chemist or a friend that dabbles in chemistry!!) and add ONLY 2 drops to the back of the neck. If not you could end up with a very inebriated bird! If you have cattle strength Ivomec then add 0.5mls to 25mls of alcohol and same dose rate. That should do the trick but you may have to repeat every couple of weeks to ensure you kill it all as air sac mite and gizzard worm can prove difficult to kill and completely remove.
Scatt is a product produced here by Vetafarm but I do not use it. The active ingredient is Moxidectin which is sold as Cydectin....5mls per litre of water for 5 days is the recommended rate. I use Cydectin (Cydectin Plus is the new version which contains a tapewormer - praziquental - as well and is VERY bitter so use a sweetener!!) quite a lot in the water but I suspect you would need to be more aggressive to get rid of air sac mite if that is what the problem really is as many respiratory problems appear to be similar to air sac BUT it is what I would suspect given the species!!! Dr Colin Walker at the Australian Pigeon Company sells both sorts in small bottles.....aint cheap but does the trick!!
Just as a final word I will refer back to a good mate who has always told me that “clean water is next to godliness” where Gouldians are concerned.
Some days are Diamonds some days are Zebs. Sometimes the coccidiosis won't leave me alone. Sometimes a cold wind blows a chill in my Gouldians. But any day with my finches is a day without stones.
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VinceS
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and I will just add these are extracts of two relevant articles on auspigeon we are discussing here:

http://www.auspigeonco.com.au/Articles/ ... eview.html
When moxidectin and ivermectin are compared, moxidectin is more potent and is also more soluble in fat (i.e. lipophilic), which means that it is more persistent in the body, exerting its effect for longer. It is because of these reasons that moxidectin is often preferred over ivermectin.

http://www.auspigeonco.com.au/Articles/ ... ntrol.html
For roundworms and hairworms, these days there is no reason to use anything else than an avermectin such as Ivermectin (‘Ivomec’) or Moxidectin. These medications are just so safe and effective and of course have the handy side-effect of also killing all external parasites that suck blood. This includes all mites. Do, however, watch your dose rate. Not all Ivomec is the same. It comes in a variety of strengths. Some large-volume bottles that seem really cheap are probably a fairly dilute preparation. One needs 10 mg of active drug per litre of drinking water for the medication to be effective. To figure out how much to add to the drinking water, multiply the strength on the label by what will become the dose to equal 10. For example, a common strength available is 0.8 mg/ml (0.8 g/litre). 0.8 x 13 equals approximately 10. So therefore, one needs to add 13 ml to 1 litre to give an effective dose. Similarly, a brand that is 5 mg/ml will only need 2 ml per litre to be added to the drinker.

All avermectins are well tolerated and the birds can be fed and loft flown routinely. These medications can also be used safely during breeding, racing and moulting. In overdose, the birds will become quiet and some may vomit. However, with withdrawal of the drug the birds become normal in 1 – 2 days.
Some days are Diamonds some days are Zebs. Sometimes the coccidiosis won't leave me alone. Sometimes a cold wind blows a chill in my Gouldians. But any day with my finches is a day without stones.
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JEWEL
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Awakening this thread again with this bit of information i found on the Lady Gouldian Finch Site.
Is this true ? We think we treat our birds but the air sac mite lingers, waiting to flare up again??

This is pasted word for word from that site. Read on.


Posterior Air Sac protection

Once a bird is infected, it is next to impossible to ever completely eradicate them from a birds respiratory system because the female protonymphs migrate to the posterior air sac where they are protected from the bird’s immune system and from the insecticides that we have available to us that will kill the adult form of the air sac mite. Remember, there is little blood flow in the air sacs themselves, so it is impossible to get the insecticide that is flowing in the bird's blood stream to the protonymphs living in the air sacs. A bird with a strong, healthy immune system can keep these nymphs in dormancy for many months, but when the bird's immune system is suppressed during times of stress, like breeding and molting, the nymphs will eventually mature and begin the whole life cycle again.
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Myzomela
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This is one reason why some birds relapse several weeks/months later after apparently being cured.
If a bird continuously relapses it should be culled from the aviary because it only acts as a source of infection for other birds.

The success of treatment depends on how severely the bird has been infected with mites, the amount of time the mites have been there and the amount of tissue damage and scarring that the mites have caused- and of course the strength of the bird's own immune system.
Research; evaluate;observe;act
maryfrancis3

I went to the site as posted .....( viewtopic.php?f=71&t=2333 ), but it is gone :(

Do you physically have to catch the birds and treat them? I used to do this in the past, but with so many birds now, it's very hard.

Now don't laugh too hard... it's just a thought.... but.... has no one invented a drinkable treatment for lice? :P :P You know, so that when the little buggers bite they die from the treatment in the bloodstream of the finches?

Mary xx
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Diane
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Location: Northern 'burbs of Adelaide

It could be that the topic was incorporated into another topic. I did a search using S76 hopefully you can find what you are looking for among these topic and comments.
search.php?keywords=s76&terms=all&autho ... mit=Search

Personally for Air sac mites I use moxidectin plus.
Diane
The difference between Genius and Stupidity is, Genius has it’s limits
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Finchman18
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Location: Mudgee, NSW

Ivomectin, use an eye dropper and apply 1 drop to the back of the neck and massage it in. near impossible to overdose a bird when you are using the right utensils.
5ml per litre of water works too, just make sure it's the oral form, but personally i prefer the eye dropper method, even if I'm treating a whole aviary as a precautionary measure, when only one bird is showing symptoms.
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rabucazz
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Hi guys,

I have been reading what Fincho162 said about Ivomec (Ivermectin) + iso-propyl alcohol. It seems to be "the way to go" if you have a bird badly infected.

Reading the MSDS of AVIMEC (Vetafarm) I saw the following composition: Ivermectin (<1%) + Benzyl alcohol (3%). Would that be the same thing Fincho162 is saying? Would it do the job well?

AVIMEC (Vetafarm) MSDS Link: http://vetafarm.com.au/wordpress/wp-con ... Avimec.pdf
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