theletterv
Meeting neighbors
Hello all ... New to this forum. I've got a pretty long story here so I'll try to cut it as short as possible.
I have four baby green-cheeked conures who are just about at weaning age. They were sick as babies with a yolk sac infection and were treated successfully with amoxicillin, or so it seemed. It was a long course of antibiotics, and included a shorter period of treatment with enrofloxacin for two out of four (the older two) before we found it was not effective.
That in itself is a long story but I will fast forward to more recently. One of the babies has always been a little behind the others. I began to notice that his poop was a little sour smelling and more watery than usual, so I took them all in to be looked at. Generally bright and healthy-seeming, a little on the thin side but also fledging and weaning so that isn't too unusual. I decided to have a full barrage of fecal tests done on the baby who was presenting with sour smelling poop. Gram stain, something else I forget, and cultures, which included sensitivity tests. Boy, that was expensive, but I thought it was better to be safe than sorry.
So today I got a call back from the vet with the results. Mostly normal bacteria but, lo and behold, a moderate amount of MRSA! Which was shocking and scary to hear. We don't really know how it happened but it is quite possible that it was triggered from the rather lengthy dose of antibiotics, sadly. Luckily, the sensitivity tests showed that a few antibiotics, including sulfa (I forget the whole name of the antibiotic, my apologies) seemed to be effective. There are others we could try but my vet says the others were hard to come by and potentially dangerous to humans.
So we are going to try the sulfa, and actually give it to all four babies because of their close contact ... It looks like there will be a 30 day course of this antibiotic before we will have to test again.
So, in dealing with this rather scary situation, I wanted to turn to a forum of bird people. The vet of course let me know that I was at a risk of infection with MRSA myself, which is scary when I think about how much those babies have scratched me up. I also have recently come down with cold symptoms so I am even more paranoid!
I am basically looking for any advice, any information that anyone might have ... Hopefully someone has experienced a MRSA infection and has come through it. It is very worrying to me. I am concerned now about how I should go about handling the babies, how I should go about cleaning, what precautions I need to make, etc.
I actually have F10 disinfectant that I purchased a while back because of the previous infection I was dealing with, and I've heard this can be useful. I am slightly worried about its use -- for example I think it is only for use on nonporous surfaces? So what should I do with rope perches, toys, etc, that may become contaminated? And also I want to make sure that no harm comes to the babies from the use of the disinfectant of course. Also, do I have to worry about dry particles of droppings that may be in the air when wings are flapped? Of course, I will be very cautious to keep everything immaculate now, so there probably won't be any more of that, but the babies are kept in my bedroom and very close to where I sleep...
Basically, I am totally overwhelmed about what to do next. I'm picking up the antibiotic tomorrow. Any advice at all would be very appreciated ...
I have four baby green-cheeked conures who are just about at weaning age. They were sick as babies with a yolk sac infection and were treated successfully with amoxicillin, or so it seemed. It was a long course of antibiotics, and included a shorter period of treatment with enrofloxacin for two out of four (the older two) before we found it was not effective.
That in itself is a long story but I will fast forward to more recently. One of the babies has always been a little behind the others. I began to notice that his poop was a little sour smelling and more watery than usual, so I took them all in to be looked at. Generally bright and healthy-seeming, a little on the thin side but also fledging and weaning so that isn't too unusual. I decided to have a full barrage of fecal tests done on the baby who was presenting with sour smelling poop. Gram stain, something else I forget, and cultures, which included sensitivity tests. Boy, that was expensive, but I thought it was better to be safe than sorry.
So today I got a call back from the vet with the results. Mostly normal bacteria but, lo and behold, a moderate amount of MRSA! Which was shocking and scary to hear. We don't really know how it happened but it is quite possible that it was triggered from the rather lengthy dose of antibiotics, sadly. Luckily, the sensitivity tests showed that a few antibiotics, including sulfa (I forget the whole name of the antibiotic, my apologies) seemed to be effective. There are others we could try but my vet says the others were hard to come by and potentially dangerous to humans.
So we are going to try the sulfa, and actually give it to all four babies because of their close contact ... It looks like there will be a 30 day course of this antibiotic before we will have to test again.
So, in dealing with this rather scary situation, I wanted to turn to a forum of bird people. The vet of course let me know that I was at a risk of infection with MRSA myself, which is scary when I think about how much those babies have scratched me up. I also have recently come down with cold symptoms so I am even more paranoid!
I am basically looking for any advice, any information that anyone might have ... Hopefully someone has experienced a MRSA infection and has come through it. It is very worrying to me. I am concerned now about how I should go about handling the babies, how I should go about cleaning, what precautions I need to make, etc.
I actually have F10 disinfectant that I purchased a while back because of the previous infection I was dealing with, and I've heard this can be useful. I am slightly worried about its use -- for example I think it is only for use on nonporous surfaces? So what should I do with rope perches, toys, etc, that may become contaminated? And also I want to make sure that no harm comes to the babies from the use of the disinfectant of course. Also, do I have to worry about dry particles of droppings that may be in the air when wings are flapped? Of course, I will be very cautious to keep everything immaculate now, so there probably won't be any more of that, but the babies are kept in my bedroom and very close to where I sleep...
Basically, I am totally overwhelmed about what to do next. I'm picking up the antibiotic tomorrow. Any advice at all would be very appreciated ...