# Finally got a save!



## Katee (Oct 11, 2007)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/[email protected]/1845964291/in/photostream/

Yep, my dad finally saved one. This guy has made it through his treatment. He had the three days of the canker treatment and we kept him an extra day, now do we just release him? Thanks to all those that helped.

We have two others, it's getting hard to find places to keep them. Both are on day two of the three days of the treatment. One, isn't doing as well as the other.  Is canker highly contagious, will it go through a whole flock of feral pigeons?

Update: The pigeon my dog got is still here. She's still doing well but shows no signs of wanting to leave yet???


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## feralpigeon (Feb 14, 2005)

Don't know what you are treating with. If Spartrix, I usually go 4-5 days w/the
treatment and then hold them over for a little bit to make sure they are stabilized. During that time I give them vitamins and probiotics. It really depends on if I know they are mated or not and how bad the canker is.
It would be a great time to worm and treat for coccidiosis if you have those
meds before releasing. ICanker is contagious in the flock setting although likewise, there is also some acquired immunityto the disease in the flock as well.

fp


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## Guest (Nov 3, 2007)

Katee,
This will be a failed rehabilitation unless you keep the bird until the mucous membranes have a chance to heal over the injured tissues. Mucous membranes protect the tissues from infection and if they remain open and exposed to the environment, the bird could easily come down with another case of canker or something like e.coli in the skin. Depending on how deeply damaged the tissues are from the canker, you need to keep this bird for at least three weeks at the minimum while he heals.

Extend the Spartrix treatment for another two days. This is an antibiotic and it has to be maintained in the blood stream until all the canker organisms are dead. To cut it short to three days will leave stronger organisms to rebound and attack the bird again.


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## Katee (Oct 11, 2007)

We treated him with Ronidazole tablets and the instructions from Foy's was once daily for three days. Should we go longer? That's why I asked, I wasn't sure if we should just release him or not. We will keep him longer, thank you.


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## Guest (Nov 3, 2007)

Katee,
Thanks for responding to my post. I'm glad you saw it. I don't use Ronidazole but instead use Spartrix. The recommended dosage for Spartrix is 5 straight days and that is the recommended dose from the Raptor Trust but I don't know the recommended dose for Ronidazole. Personally, I don't think there is anything wrong with giving him another two days to make sure. These canker medications have a wide margin of safety. 

I currently have a bird that has canker on the inside of the bottom beak in the front, under the tongue. His tissues there are all chopped up but the canker, for the most part, is gone. There is still dead canker oozing out of the tissues. How long is it going to take before the canker is completely ejected by the body? I don't know but the body has not even begun to heal and it won't until the last vestige of canker is gone so this is not yet a cure. He's very raw and I can't release him until that area is nice and pink and all healed up otherwise I'll be seeing him in another month with the same thing.

How much time is needed for this to completely heal over? It's a guess. You have to judge by how healthy the attacked area looks. There has to be a time for the body to heal the eroded tissue and then the body has to cover over the area with new mucous membranes. Many times, after a canker infection is gone, the skin forms a protective, white soft scab over the area while the body heals. As long as that scab is there, it's dangerous to release the bird. You may see a scab and you may not. It doesn't form all the time and may depend on where the canker attack took place.

I can't emphasize it enough that a strong light source is needed to really see the tissues. A halogen is great but sunlight is not good enough to really see inside.

The bottom line is it's better to hold the bird until the area looks completely normal.


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## TAWhatley (Mar 6, 2001)

Good job with this pigeon, Katee! I, too, would go an extra couple of days with the canker meds. Canker can be very contagious in situations where a flock is sharing food and/or water sources.

Terry


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## KIPPY (Dec 18, 2003)

I have Spartrix in hand here and my directions say 1 tablet per day for 2 - 3 days. 

I'm curious, why do you suggest 5 days?


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## Guest (Nov 4, 2007)

Kippy,

People don't understand that Spatrix is an antibiotic. An antibiotic must be maintained in the blood stream at a certain level in order for it to continue to work. Stopping one too soon or delivering a weaker dose would kill weaker organisms but leave the stronger ones and they would become more resistant to the drug. It has to remain in the system at a level that will kill off all of the organisms.

If I were ill and had to be on an antibiotic for 10 days but stopped it in three, I would not get better and might even become sicker because of drug resistance. No doctor would ever prescribe an antibiotic for only 2 to 3 days for that reason and the same goes for the antibiotic, Spartrix.

People who own fancy or racing pigeons are probably the ones who are responsible for creating drug resistant canker strains. They medicated with these drugs only as a prophylactic and going only by the instructions on the box, they created the strains that are now resistant creating a problem for all pigeons. Just because they have prize pigeons doesn't mean they know anything about the insides of these birds. All pigeons live in a natural balance with the internal parasites, bacteria and fungi in which they are surrounded. If that balance is disturbed, especially if there is no good reason to mess around with it, they are going to be in danger of developing a resistance and it happened with canker.

In a bird ill with a canker infection, giving only 2-3 pills, it might appear that the canker is being killed off but there will remain stronger organisms that will pick up the attack once the level of Spartrix has been lowered in the blood stream. In a canker bird, it all has to be killed off to effect a cure or we will be seeing that bird again in a month.


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## KIPPY (Dec 18, 2003)

Thank you for the information.


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## Feefo (Feb 8, 2002)

> I currently have a bird that has canker on the inside of the bottom beak in the front, under the tongue.


Are you certain that is canker, Fred? It sounds very like a yeast lesion, that is a typical position for it. It is one of the conditions that can easily be confused with canker.


Cynthia


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## Guest (Nov 4, 2007)

Cynthia,
i'm sure it's canker. It's all falling apart now and the color is yellow-white, not white. He's on Nystatin so the possibility of yeast is being covered but yeast doesn't chop up the tissues and cause bleeding like this one did.


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## Feefo (Feb 8, 2002)

I am becoming rather fond of Nystatin. 

I noticed that one of my wood pigeons had ruffled feathers under his beak, so I examined his mouth and found that there were a number of white spots inside it and the lower beak was framed with a white edging. As a precaution I treated him with Spartrix but I dribbled Nystatin over the spots as well...within a day most of the spots were gone and he was clear within two days (but I completed the course for both canker and yeast).

Cynthia


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## Guest (Nov 4, 2007)

Cynthia,
It's prevalent and not enough attention is given to yeast by many people. Animal General in NYC treats thousands of pigeons each year and one person whom I know, takes a lot of birds there. I would estimate that 95% of the birds she took in tested positive for yeast infection. It's gotten to a point that whenever I put a bird on any kind of medication, Nystatin is also given. 
When she started to use Medistatin on a regular basis, Animal General found no yeast in the birds. I know that Maggie uses it on a regular basis. Perhaps you do too. When it comes to ferals, everyone should use it.


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## Maggie-NC (Jun 22, 2005)

Using Nystatin is just an automatic with us. It is one of those meds we keep on hand and always give it when a pigeon is on antibiotics.


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## Feefo (Feb 8, 2002)

> People don't understand that Spatrix is an antibiotic. An antibiotic must be maintained in the blood stream at a certain level in order for it to continue to work. Stopping one too soon or delivering a weaker dose would kill weaker organisms but leave the stronger ones and they would become more resistant to the drug. It has to remain in the system at a level that will kill off all of the organisms.
> 
> If I were ill and had to be on an antibiotic for 10 days but stopped it in three, I would not get better and might even become sicker because of drug resistance. No doctor would ever prescribe an antibiotic for only 2 to 3 days for that reason and the same goes for the antibiotic, Spartrix.


As far as I know Carnidazole is used only as a trichomonacide.

I appreciate what you are saying about completing a course of antibiotics, but I think it is a mistake to assume - on the basis of that - that the dosage for Sprtrix should always be longer than the manufacturer recommends

Harkers' current instructions for the administration of Spartrix to pigeons are : _" 1 tablet per adult pigeon (ie 10mg per pigeon) , half tablet for a young pigeon. A single dose is usually sufficient. Cases which do not respond within 3 days may be treated again. Consult your veterinary surgeon if symptoms do not regress after the second treatment) ._

On the subject of Trichomonaisis the Merck Veterinary Manual states : Treatment is generally either *carnidazole (20 mg/kg, PO, once), *ronidazole (5 mg/kg, SID for 14 days), or metronidazole (40-60 mg/kg, PO, SID for 5 days

There is a danger in applying the dosage information for one drug to another, and that is that it could lead to an overdose. Fortunately Spartrix has a very wide safety margin so this is unlikely to happen.

Cynthia


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## Guest (Nov 5, 2007)

Cynthia,

We aren't going to change very many minds here. People are going to do what they feel works. Let me just tell you how this evolved in my mind. I received a call from somebody at Animal General some time ago and was asked how many Spartrix I normally give a bird. At that time, I gave 4 pills, one a day. In order to confirm my recommendation, the person put a call into the Raptor trust, a very well known rehabilitation center here in the States. Their recommendation was to use 5 pills. When I received word of that, I upped the dose to 5 days. 

I can't get my hands on an old report that was on the web some time ago but that report stated that Spartrix was safe up to 32 times the dose. Now, all that does is to give one the margin of safety for the drug. Nobody is going to dose at that incredibly high rate. 

You wrote, "As far as I know Carnidazole is used only as a trichomonacide." An antibiotic is a drug that can kill a living organism either directly or indirectly so it should be considered to be an antibiotic, a very specialized one but it is a killer of biological organisms.

Very early in this activity, I used to dose with only one pill of Spartrix and birds did come back to me with a recurrence of canker so one Spartrix is just not enough in many cases, perhaps in all.. no way of knowing.

You also felt it was wrong to go above the manufacturer's recommended dose but the manufacturer has not changed this amount in the face of more resistant strains that have appeared in the past few years. In time, Spartrix might not be effective at all.


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## Feefo (Feb 8, 2002)

I found the report of the X 32 before posting, it was at this site:

http://www.vmd.gov.uk/espcsite/Documents/112758.DOC Which, incidentally is our (UK) Veterinary Medicines Directorate, which is an Executive Agency of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). They too specify that Spartrix is a single dose drug, though I note that was written in 2002.

I seem to remember that the former recommended dose for Spartrix was 3 and up to 5 tablets on consecutive days. However, even though it was not in their interests to do so, the manufacturers changed the dosing instructions and must have had a reason.

Yes, there are trichomonads that are resistant to a lot of the drugs that we use, but I don't think that giving increasingly larger doses or longer courses solves this problem. The resistance to Spartrix has been attributed to the regular routine use of it in lofts whether there was evidence of canker or not. 

BTW, I do know what an antibiotic is. My point is that Spartrix is aimed specifically at trichomonads and the effect of a single dose can be easily established with a microscope.

Cynthia


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## Guest (Nov 5, 2007)

Cynthia,

Good going. Finding that old report was good. Look, I didn't think I could change anyone's mind about this although it makes for a good discussion. As far as looking under a microscope, you would have to take actual, infected tissue, not the exudate, that has been previously treated with one Spartrix to see if any are still alive and hiding or gone. That could settle the issue.


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