Giardia ?'s

[Macawnutz]

@ejaehnig

If you have still not found a way to get the meds in them then you must either #1 towel them and do it or #2 call your vet and ask for a water dose.

The water dose may not work either, you have to watch to be sure they are drinking and you will have to retest to make sure it is working.

Sometimes you have to be the bad guy to do the right thing. I have peeved off MANY macaws that did not want to take their medicine. Some of them were toweled three times a day for weeks. It got to the point that they screamed if I was in the room..... Sometimes you have to be the bad guy.

 

[meandmyfids]

I know metro is bitter tasting

 

[ejaehnig]

I've tried catching and toweling him a couple of times now. However it was so stressful on him I really don't want to do it again. It took me nearly 5 minutes to catch him both times and by the time I was done he was so stressed and breathing heavy that I was seriously worried he might have a heart attack. I left a message for my vet today to hopefully get some alternative treatment methods but haven't heard back yet.

 

[pajarita]

The thing with dosing in water is that it simply does not work UNLESS the medicine is 100% effective and the disease is relatively easy to 'kill' (like chlamydiosis treated with doxy) and, when it comes to giardia and metronidazole, it's a double whammy because the disease is VERY hard to eradicate completely and metronidazole is only up to 40% effective nowadays so I would think it would be nothing short of a miracle to actually cure a bird of it doing it that way.

In my personal experience, all hand-fed birds like eating from a syringe and require no toweling for it (it's the wild-caughts that are a problem to medicate). Have you tried feeding the bird baby food from a syringe? Because it's easy to trick them into taking the medicine that way... you just have to give the bird a squirt of baby food once, refill syringe and give a squirt of baby food twice, refill syringe with baby food AND medicine on the third try and give the bird a nut after. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. I use stage 2 sweet potatoes because the birds like it very much and it's so thin that you can suck it up in the syringe with no problem.

I am surprised your birds did not like the water with ACV, mine actually like it better than plain water... you just can't use a high ratio -I use about two tablespoons to a gallon but you can also add a bit of white grape juice to it to mask the flavor better.

 

[Sadieladie1994]

I would avoid grape juice as it is sweet and grows bacteria.

 

[Chantilly Lace]

Flagyl sure is a nasty tasting drug! We have used it on chinchillas before, and I wanted to see how it tasted. Blech! Terrible. It would be so hard getting that down a birds throat. I know I would have a million half eaten syringes if I had to do that.

 

[Hankmacaw]

Batelby - you might try Listerine in the water. My birds, like yours would let themselves get dehydrated with vinegar in their water and GSE,s only effectiveness is from the stuff in it used for suspension.

 

[Sadieladie1994]

Batelby - you might try Listerine in the water. My birds, like yours would let themselves get dehydrated with vinegar in their water and GSE,s only effectiveness is from the stuff in it used for suspension.

Thank you for saying that about GSE....it is the suspension and not the GSE that is effective and this has been tested.

 

[Love My Zons]

Coconut oil is also effective to kill giardia and coccidia. You can try using some with melted into some warm bird bread or muffins.

 

[Pentameter]

Here's what the merck veterinary manual has to say about giardiasis in pet birds:

This intestinal protozoal disease is seen most often in cockatiels. Adult birds may be latent carriers. Transmission is presumably direct (ingestion of infective cysts). Affected cockatiels occasionally exhibit feather pulling in the axillary and inner thigh regions, along with vocalization. A true causal relationship between giardiasis and these clinical signs has not been proved. Droppings of affected cockatiels may be voluminous and aerated (a “popcorn” appearance).

Giardia psittaci, Gram's stain, parakeet small intestine


Metronidazole (50 mg/kg, sid for 5–7 days) is the recommended treatment.

It sort of makes sense the vet would be shocked to see giardia; it's not a common diagnosis in parrots and the little "clown face" guys there can be tough to see, especially if you're not looking for them.

Here's some notes from my veterinary parasitology course (keep in mind this refers to the parasite in dogs and cats, but the life cycle info is the same):
-The "clown face" guys are called trophozoites; these are the guys that like to hang out in the intestine (in dogs and cats, usually in the duodenum)
-Cysts are the infective form, they're even tinier than the cysts!
-The life cycle begins when the cyst is ingested.
-When inside the animal, the trophozoite comes out of the cyst and migrates to the small intestine
-Trophozoites are the active feeding stage and while most infections are asymptomatic, acute inflammation (diarrhea, etc) is possible
-Trophozoites multiply asexually by binary fission. After a few replication cycles, the trophozoite encysts
-Cysts come out in the feces, and the cycle begins again
-Cysts are hardy and can survive for 2-4 weeks in the environment
-Sources of transmission are usually either fecal-oral (eating infected poo) or from contaminated drinking water.
-To remove the possibility of water transmission, high-quality water filters (you need them to be able to filter things about 12 micrometers in size, which is the size of the cysts)
-Trophozoites can't survive long outside the host but may emerge in runny stool; they are not infective
-Giardia is a zoonotic disease and care should be taken to avoid fecal-oral transmission
-Treatment can be from 5-15 days because reinfection from cysts can easily occur

I was at school on a caribbean island and I got giardia from the tap water; I'll spare the details of the symptoms, but you can imagine. I was treated with a drug which the doctor said would make me nauseous, especially without food and water to accompany it. The drug was strong tasting and did indeed make me woozy. Unfortunately, there's not many drugs out there that are effective and safe that don't case the nausea or have the bad taste.

 

[Irishj9]

Thank you guys...now Im itchy all over. F10 in all birdie water regularly from now on

JP

 

[Mikkee]

Hi all...Mikkee also had giardia. She was prescribed Metronidazole, but it only worked while she was on it. A week after finishing her dose, she was still infected. She had it bad. She would pluck, itch and scream all the time. She barely had feathers under her wings and around her neck and chest. It was hard to see her suffer as she could not even relax and sleep without having to pluck and scratch. I was washing her cage and toys with soapy and warm water while she was medicated and after, but without any results. I took her back to the vet, who prescribed Ronidazole. This time around, though, I bought stainless steel food and water holders for her cage, new plastic/stainless steel toys. Every toy made of paper and/or cloth, I threw out. I would fill the bathtub with very, very hot water and allow all the removable parts of her cage and all the toys and food/water holders to sit in that water for at least 10 minutes. Then I would wash everything with clean very hot water with a bit of soap (I would just keep the hot water tap flowing with hot water). I would rinse everything very very very well to remove the soap completely. This was my daily routine twice a day (morning and evening). Oh, I would also vacuum her cage while I washed its parts. Once her treatment with Ronidazole was completed, I continued to do this washing routine twice a day for about a month. It was a bit of work and I had to stick it religiously. Well, now Mikkee is fine. She has stopped plucking her feathers, stopped scratching and spends her time playing and/or sleeping peacefully. Four months later and Mikkee is fine. All her bald spots now are covered with yellow feathers and she's a happy bird. I do not believe that the medication alone cured her. It was switching all her toys and food/water holders to plastic and/or stainless steel AND sterilizing all the cage parts plus and toys etc. vigorously with the hottest water possible twice a day. Just washing the cage parts/toys/holders was not enough. It had to be sterilized. This method also prevented her from ingesting any of her poop (which she would do often). For some strange reason, as she got better she would eat less of her poop. Today, I wash her cage one day and do the sterilization procedure every other day. This procedure worked. Try it and commit to following the process through and should see these agonizing days of giardia a thing of the past. Good luck and let me know how it went. (Mikkee).

 

[Hankmacaw]

That sounds great Mikkee and the same thing I did with Hanks aviary, cage and toys every day when he had a MRSA infection. Took four months, but he survived when the Dr. said I would likely lose him.

The one recommendation I have is that you use F-10. It is absolutely safe for you and your bird. No rinsing is recommended as it leaves a disinfectant layer when it dries. I find it is cheapest at WingedVictory.

Ihttp://F10 Bird & Reptile Cleaning Disinfectant - 200 ml

 

[Mikkee]

Thanks Hankmacaw....I will definitely look into the F-10. Definitely, sometimes even vets can get it wrong. It's been my experience in the past. Way to go, Hank.