# Can Baytril and Bactrim be used together?



## eternal (Feb 13, 2010)

Hi!

I have another sick pigeon, I started him on Baytril, but can I add Bactrim too?

I haven't found any interactions yet, and I read somewhere that Bactrim can be used with penicillins. Penicillins are bactericides, the same es Baytril, I figured it wouldn't be a problem. What do you think?


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## Bella_F (Nov 29, 2008)

Hi Eternal! 

No- Bactrim doesn't mix with other antibiotics such as Baytril or Amoxicillin. You can use Baytril with Doxycycline when required though. Amoxicillin is very vulnerable to losing effectiveness when mixed with Sulfas.

PS. What were you treating for?


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## ETphonehome (Jan 3, 2012)

Although most studies are based on humans I think the next links may help.

I have read that Bactrim is better to be used when a test have demostrated than this is the best option because the present bateria is susceptible to the antibioticum but that is of course applicable to every antibiotica.

My guess is if I do not know what is affecting the pigeon to limit the risks to a minimun better trying first one antbioticum only and if no improvement is seen to try the second one. 

Unfortunately side effects and interactions in other species than humans are largely less documented.

http://ratguide.com/meds/antimicrobial_agents/enrofloxacin_baytril.php

http://www.rxlist.com/bactrim-drug-center.htm


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## eternal (Feb 13, 2010)

Thank you. I will try with Baytril, it's been two days, still no improvement, and I cought it early. 
Here in Serbia are holidays now, so doing the antibiogram isn't an option.
I'm treating her for salmonellosis.


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## Bella_F (Nov 29, 2008)

Hi Eternal,

Sorry to hear there's Salmonella going around your place again, its rough isn't it?. I remember from last time that you had good results with combining the treatment for Salmonella (Chloramphenocol) with Ampolium for coccidia, as well as a canker med (was it metronidazole?). The Chloramphenocol wasn't enough on its own, and you hadn't had good results with baytril.

Have you thought about doing a combination treatment like that again?


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## eternal (Feb 13, 2010)

Chloramphenicol in fact did work, but it took more time than usual.
That's why I've decided to try Batril now.


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## Jay3 (May 4, 2008)

Baytril is usually good for salmonella.


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## Charis (Feb 11, 2007)

There are different strains of salmonella and not all are sensitive to just one antibiotic. That's why it's good to have a culture if possible. It's recommended to treat for 14 days rather than 10.


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## Bella_F (Nov 29, 2008)

I totally agree.

PS. I was referring to the thread which Eternal started last year titled `young-pigeon-with-salmonella-chloramphenicol-not-working'

http://www.pigeons.biz/forums/f6/young-pigeon-with-salmonella-chloramphenicol-not-working-56046.html

It was suggested to use Baytril, and Eternal said ``
Baytril was always my first choice, but that was before I lost many pigeons due to resistance to Baytril! I saved so many lives with Chloramphenicol, but I really don't know what to do in this situation!''

If you keep following the thread, the bird with suspected salmonella didn't start to get better until other meds for coccidia and canker were added. So based on that, I believe that unless tests for Salmonella are conducted, there's no way to be sure the bird has Salmonella, or that its the only illness (might be a combination of several illnesses).

Baytril is great if you know that the bird has a specific illness that is sensitive to it. But if you `guess' that the bird has salmonella without having lab tests, treating with just Baytril may not address other illnesses that could be incvolved- ecoli, canker, coccidia, worms, etc


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## eternal (Feb 13, 2010)

That was definitely salmonella and not coccidia or canker, the proof was in the poop. When birds have coccidia or worms, the droppings look different.


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## Bella_F (Nov 29, 2008)

eternal said:


> That was definitely salmonella and not coccidia or canker, the proof was in the poop. When birds have coccidia or worms, the droppings look different.


Eternal, Not saying you're wrong about the Salmonella, but from what I've read & experienced personally, I do not believe that its possible to diagnose illness in pigeons solely from the appearance of droppings. If it was, vets would just look at bird droppings instead of performing tests. I also believe this is a dangerous way of thinking, for your birds.

How do you know the difference, for certain, between a dropping from a sick bird with salmonella, or Salmonella with coccidia, canker, and worms? And what is the difference between ecoli droppings and salmonella? Or a virus in combination with salmonella? There are a lot of things that can cause green enteritis. Just saying....


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## Jay3 (May 4, 2008)

Have to agree with Bella on this one. You can't diagnose an illness just on the look of the droppings.


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## eternal (Feb 13, 2010)

In my experience, you can. This pigeon for example doesn't have bile green enteritis. Bile green I've seen only in salmonella! When I had pigeon with PMV, he had normal poop! Yes, normal! Only later he developed polyuria. When I had bird with coccidia, the poop was smelly, not green but rather brown, slimy. With E.coli, the poop looked similar to one with coccidia, but still not completely the same. It was more green and with more urine. 

This new pigeon, I named her MEggie, doesn't eat seeds, I though she wasn't eating at all, but thne I was eating spinach pie and left some and she came down and started to eat it. And the same thing happened the next day! ??????


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## spirit wings (Mar 29, 2008)

eternal said:


> In my experience, you can. This pigeon for example doesn't have bile green enteritis. Bile green I've seen only in salmonella! When I had pigeon with PMV, he had normal poop! Yes, normal! Only later he developed polyuria. When I had bird with coccidia, the poop was smelly, not green but rather brown, slimy. With E.coli, the poop looked similar to one with coccidia, but still not completely the same. It was more green and with more urine.
> 
> This new pigeon, I named her MEggie, doesn't eat seeds, I though she wasn't eating at all, but thne I was eating spinach pie and left some and she came down and started to eat it. And the same thing happened the next day! ??????


That is great you know your clinical signs of disease, some veterinarians are not even real good at it ...wow!. 

from what I have read here are the signs of salmonella overload. ACUTE FROM NOT CHRONIC FORM

"Enteritis with pulpy, mucoid, greenish droppings; once organs (liver, kidneys, spleen) have become infected, there is growth retardation, emaciation and (in isolated cases) death. Embryos infected with salmonellae frequently die in ovo or during the first few days of life."











"Faeces in salmonellosis showing pathological changes: The few faecal constituents lie in a mucoid/aqueous fluid with white flocculent components."


And I think this would be wise reguardless of your talents for clinical signs. :
"To check the outcome of the treatment, carry out bacteriological examinations on faecal samples. These should take place at least 14 days after termination of treatment, and then repeated twice at 3-week intervals."


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## eternal (Feb 13, 2010)

I agree that you can't diagnose bird only by looking at their droppings, but I had grat experience with salmonella and that bile green poop is one of the symptoms. And I already said that even when the bird is on the formula, the droppings aren't yellow, but GREEN! As the bird is getting better, the droppings are becoming yellow. 

I had a bird with salmonella, canker and even lung problems. Chloramphenicol and metronidazole solved that, he was barely alive when I got him. But it wasn't the canker that was killing him, but ematiation and dehydration due to salmonella infection and maybe some other lung infection.

This bird doesn't have green poop, Meggie I mean, she's eating spinach pie as we speak and I think she even ate some seeds today because I was feeding her some seeds today and yesterday. I had a case like this before, the pigeon "forgot" that he should eat seeds. Maybe this is the case too. The pigeon is thoroughbred pigeon, has a bracelet/ring, but his owner isn't experineced in treating them so I'm treating her.


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## Bella_F (Nov 29, 2008)

Dear Eternal,

I just wanted to say that I think you're doing a great job and I feel bad for casting any doubt on your intuition..that wasn't my intention. I respect you a lot; I am coming from the position of hoping to throw some alternative ideas at you regarding this problem, which has been going on for some time now.

I've been following all of your posts for the past year or so, and what leaps out at me is the pattern with which you treat some of the sick birds- it goes something like this:

1. you look at the sick birds poop, make diagnosis that its Salmonella
2. you treat for salmonella, but the bird doesn't respond to treatment 
3. After a week or two, You post here and say bird isn't responding to salmonella treatment, it must be a problem with the drug , what else can you use?
4. You finally treat with other meds for coccidia and canker.
5. bird recovers

So my own personal intuition is that there is another possible conclusion to draw from this. Rather than every bird being resistant to Baytril , its just as likely that your birds simply have more than one illness, or an alternative illness, by the time you begin treatment. Its extremely common. This is why people have suggested to you in the past to treat a little more broadly from the get go, instead of waiting until the bird is nearly dead before expanding treatment to include coccidia and canker, for example. 

My suggestion is if you won't get lab tests done (and not everyone can afford these, I know) please consider including metronidazole and amprolium in your treatment regime (along with Baytril) from the beginning (instead of adding them at the end when the bird is much more sick). This is a very broad, very safe combination of medicine to use when you don't have tests to confirm what is wrong.

Anyway just my thoughts...


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## eternal (Feb 13, 2010)

It could be that the infection was very serious. I'm saying this because I had another pigeon after that one and it was the same thing, but he was only on chloramphenicol. 
It took days and she is ok now, still with me. 

It's not about affording it, like I said we had holidays previous week, I had them done before. Also the problem with these tests is that I usually find very sick pigeons and I have to start with treatment immediately. I can't wait three days to collect poop or when I did collect the droppings they would get better if I had started with treatment. 

This is the pigeon, so cute https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.ne...2423_100001046525415_1182801_1256019873_n.jpg


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## spirit wings (Mar 29, 2008)

eternal said:


> It could be that the infection was very serious. I'm saying this because I had another pigeon after that one and it was the same thing, but he was only on chloramphenicol.
> It took days and she is ok now, still with me.
> 
> It's not about affording it, like I said we had holidays previous week, I had them done before. Also the problem with these tests is that I usually find very sick pigeons and I have to start with treatment immediately. I can't wait three days to collect poop or when I did collect the droppings they would get better if I had started with treatment.
> ...


That is wise starting a noticably sick bird on something anything to save it... but in the mean time it can be switched to a more effective med if needed after finding out what medication would be most effective by a culture. you mentioned spinnach pie.. what is that?...anyting with greens in it would make for some green droppings I would think? but as said she does not... humm I would think she would with spinnach..


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## eternal (Feb 13, 2010)

spinach pie is a pie with spinach and cheese. She likes it very much, sleeping in the casseorole where the pie was. lol so funny. she even took bath today in her water glass.
I have a video if you want to see it. She probably forgot to eat seeds, she has eaten some today. 

When my birds had salmonella, the poop was intense green, not usual natural green or olive. This one is green, but nothing like that, it's dark green, normal. Let's hope it stays like that. She's on metronidazole and baytril at the moment. 

Some of her win feathers are torn and tail feathers are in bad state. Maybe that's way she doesn't fly. 

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.ne...8531_100001046525415_1182825_1804172492_n.jpg


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## Bella_F (Nov 29, 2008)

eternal said:


> It could be that the infection was very serious. I'm saying this because I had another pigeon after that one and it was the same thing, but he was only on chloramphenicol.
> It took days and she is ok now, still with me.


Yes, thats true. But I remember the last time (with the baby white pigeon) you said that after 2 weeks there still was no result from Chloramphenocol. I suppose diseases can behave differently in different regions around the world, but I find that if I am using the right medication, it would be highly abnormal for any bird not to respond with 2 days, or 4 days at the most. Bird metabolisms are so fast, that for the most part I see results within the day when I am treating correctly, most particularly when I've treated birds for Salmonella.

We had a bad Salmonella outbreak over the summer, and quite a few birds were sick at the same time, showing similar symptoms. I collected over a dozen birds during that time. What I found was that it was easy to assume that all the birds had Salmonella after a couple responded well to ciprofloxacin. But this wasn't the case. Some had other illness and wouldn't get better without amprolium & there was no way of telling which drug would help just by looking at the bird droppings and behaviour, or by what the last bird had. I have had two more like this in the last week, both treated with Baytril for two days (no result), then amprolium added for coccidia, and the result was a very rapid improvement after the amprolium. But I have had others who only needed the ciprofloxacin .

Anyway, I'm still dealing with this problem, on top of a pox outbreak, so I just thought to share some of my experiences. Hope they help a little.


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## eternal (Feb 13, 2010)

the pigeon doesn't want to eat seeds! he wants to eat pie, I think he would eat bread, what should I do?


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## spirit wings (Mar 29, 2008)

eternal said:


> the pigeon doesn't want to eat seeds! he wants to eat pie, I think he would eat bread, what should I do?


lol... I don't blame him!.. what I would do for an adult pigeon that was healthy is put some seed with the pie and slowly add more seed and less pie, then at some point it is all seed and leave it for him..when they get hungry enough they will eat it.

a bit off topic.. what is the recipe for this spinnach pie.


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## eternal (Feb 13, 2010)

I'm feeding him seeds, but he still doesn't eat them by himself? I guess it takes time! 

I will write you the recipe, but I don't know if you will find all the ingredients for it because I think you will have to make the dough yourself for the piecrust.  Search for bosnian spinach pie  
http://www.frischmax.at/proizvodi/kore.jpg piecrust you need, you need filo pastry


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## spirit wings (Mar 29, 2008)

eternal said:


> I'm feeding him seeds, but he still doesn't eat them by himself? I guess it takes time!
> 
> I will write you the recipe, but I don't know if you will find all the ingredients for it because I think you will have to make the dough yourself for the piecrust.  Search for bosnian spinach pie
> http://www.frischmax.at/proizvodi/kore.jpg piecrust you need, you need filo pastry


Thank you very very much!


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