Diseases, Ailments and Parasites

Taken from various sources text and www

Aspergillosis

Aspergillosis is caused by a fungus (aspergillus), which is found commonly growing on dead leaves, stored grain, compost piles, or other decaying vegetation.

Signs & Symptoms: Emaciation, respiratory distress, neuromuscular disease, abnormal droppings, regurgitation, voice changes, poor appetite, nasal discharge, gout, conjunctivitis

Laboratory Findings: Fungal culture and identification combined with presence of lesions.

Prevention: Minimize stress and overcrowding. Malnutrition from lack of proper diet. Poor ventiliation. Disinfectant fumes, cigarette smoke, ammonia, and other toxic chemicals.Transmitted by spores which are often present in the environment. Healthy unstressed birds are generally resistant to fairly high concentrations of spores. Young, old, unhealthy and those on antibiotics or corticosteroid therapy are frequently infected. Reduce contact with nesting materials, etc which may be contaminated with mold or spores. Feed should be free of fungal growth. Maybe found in corn and grain products as well as manufactured pellets or extruded food. Improper storage of these food products will greatly increase contamination.

Treatment & Medications: Removal of stress factors. Flucytosine, Fluconazole and Itraconazole are recommended.

TRICHOMONIASIS

Trichomonas gallinae

OCCURRENCE: Occurs in pigeons & doves & raptors that feed on them. Occasionally in turkeys, chickens, & game birds. Outbreaks usually occur in warm weather in warm climates.

EPIZOOTIOLOGY: Pigeons are carriers & contaminate surface water or water containers. Pigeons can transmit trichomonads to their young during feeding. Raptors expose themselves & their young by feeding them infected doves & pigeons. CLINICAL SIGNS: Pigeons, doves, & raptors have trouble closing their mouth due to oral lesions. Drooling & repeated swallowing movements. Watery eyes with sinus or periorbital lesions & rarly CNS signs. Turkeys have a gaunt appearance with a hollowed area over the crop. Swallowing movements. Bird may have an unpleasant odor.

MORBIDITY & MORTALITY: Varies but can be high.

LESIONS:

Pigeons, doves & raptors: yellow plaques or raised cheesy masses involving the upper digestive tract. Most extensive in mouth, pharynx, esophagus, crop, proventriculus, sinuses. Raptors may also have liver lesions & peritonitis. Turkeys: lesions found only in crop or esophagus.

DIAGNOSIS: Signs & lesions; Finding trichomonads in the oral fluids.

PREVENTION: Good sanitation; Provide clean water; Avoid mixing species; protozoacides

TREATMENT: Dimetridazole, aminonitrothiazole, Enheptin.

COCCIDIA

A disease that is caused by protozoan organisms in the intestinal tract, and is one of the most common and frustrating diseases to treat. Lots of different species infect raptors, some that have to infect rodents in order in get into the raptor. Often a stress related disease.

Clinical signs - Depression, loss of appetite, watery diarrhea and poor development in young falcons (example:Kestrels). In full grown birds there are vague signs such as not flying hard, slugishness, weakness, listlessness, inappetance, dehydration, ruffled feathers, anemia, retraction of the head and neck, regurgitation.

Treatment - Albon or Bactrovet and a european drug called Baycox. All birds receiving treatment should be kept quiet, their weight up, and a bath pan available at all times.

Usually on the exams (Test questions), the question reads something like this "What are red in the mutes?"

LEUCOCYTOZOONOSIS

An important blood parasite of raptors. This parasite produces an anti-erythrocyte factor causing intervascular hemolysis and anemia. Deaths are more common in juvenile raptors versus adults. Variable success for treatment of ths parasite has been tried with TMS or Doxycycline. Alway provide supportive care.

Occurs most frequently in the SE U.S. and Minnesota & Wisconsin.

Epizootiology - Birds that survive the disease become carriers. Black flies and midges transmit the disease to susceptible birds.

Clinical signs - Sudden & explosive onset. Depression, anorexia, thirst, loss of equilibrium, weakness, anemia, rapid labored breathing.

Prevention - Control Black Fly & Midges population.

AVIAN POX

Cause

Poxvirus, several strains.

Host

Variety of birds worldwide: upland gamebirds, songbirds, marine birds, parrot family, occasionally raptors, rarely waterfowl.

Transmission

Direct contact with infected birds, ingestion of food and water contaminated by sick birds or carcasses, or contact with contaminated surfaces such as bird feeders and perches. The virus enters through abraded skin. Insects, especially mosquitoes, may act as mechanical vectors.

Clinical/Field Signs

Avian pox can occur in two forms: cutaneous pox and diphtheritic or "wet" pox. In cutaneous pox (the most common form), wartlike growths occur around the eyes, beak or any unfeathered skin. This leads to difficulty seeing, breathing, feeding, or perching. In diphtheritic pox, the growths form in the mouth, throat, trachea and lungs resulting in difficulty breathing or swallowing. Birds with either type may appear weak and emaciated.

Lesions

Warty growths on unfeathered skin, sometimes in large clusters. Size and number of growths depend on the stage and severity of infection. Common sites include feet, legs, base of beak, and eye margins. Often emaciated due to inability to feed. In the diphtheritic form, there are raised, yellow plaques on the mucus membranes of the mouth and throat.

Wildlife Management Significance

The disease can be a significant mortality factor in some upland game bird (fall and winter), songbird (winter), and raptor populations. Birds can survive with supportive care, food and water, and protection from secondary infections. Warty scabs contain infectious viral material. Decontamination of bird feeders, birdbaths, transport cages with 10% bleach and water solution is recommended. In some situations, removing infected birds can be important to reduce the amount of virus available to noninfected birds.

Bumblefoot

A condition that describes an inflammitory change in the raptors foot/talon. Reddend,swollen and/or ulcerative along one or more of the metatarsal pads.

Cure: Preventitive - diet, a nervous raptor that pounds the wall. Punture wounds that are self inflicted from the back talon. Blunt the back talon for prevention

Treatment: A series of medical bandage wraps before and after surgical debridement of the wound, padded perches and change the wrap daily. Also, aggressive antibiotic therapy and see a veternarian immediately.

External parasites - , Sevin, can be applied by gloved hands, outside with a light breeze. Work the medication into the feathers, like the neck and the mail feathers. Once to twice a year. Ivermektin can remove ticks. Ticks can carry lymes disease and can be a discomfort to their eyelids. Probably most common to find ticks either on passage hawks or eyasses.

Raptor Repertoire: Skip's questions

From: [email protected] Date: 18 Jan 97 20:04:14 EST

>Aspergillosis

I'll just tell you some of our experiences with asper, since so far I haven't heard any hard and fast rules for either prevention, diagnosis or treatment, although all three are possible.

Our education merlin (named "Merlin") used to greet the day's volunteer who brought her mouse with ear-piercing screams. You could actually feel little stabs to the eardrums. One day she opened her mouth and made all the appropriate screaming movements and nothing came out but "hhh, hhh, hhh." The vet was alarmed and suspected aspergillosis. Asper spores are in the air everywhere anyway (they are one of the things that bloom out on your bread in the refrigerator) and so most birds have them in their lungs anyway. Just some unknown stress can cause them to grow out of control and then serious problems occur.

I don't know what the first medicine we used on Merlin was but it seemed to make her worse. She stopped eating and sat all hunched up with her eyes closed for several days. What we ended up using was a nebulizer, a little fog-making machine, which pumped vapor into her kennel (which we had wrapped with blankets to hold it all in). The medicine being vaporized was Clotrimazole, as follows:

For nebulizing merlin: Clotrimazole twice a day: 3 ml diluted with 3 ml normal saline. Run fogger for 1/2 hour and let sit for 1/2 hour before opening kennel.

Note: I didn't know enough to note the strength of the medicine at the time.

Anyway, this helped and she started getting her voice back. But she never completely shook it until a volunteer took her home and nebulized her three times a day. As for the definitive diagnosis, tests for asper that we sent off to labs were inconclusive. Incidentally, her voice has never been as piercing since.

Another bird with definite asper and definite symptoms was a raven, who held his beak open breathing raspily, while strings of saliva drooled out of his mouth. He died. Necropsy revealed both lungs completely packed with what looked like cottage cheese. I believe it was in the air sacs in his bones also. Raspy breath is never a good sign.

Rehabbers on-line urge each other not to bed birds down in straw, wood shavings or other organic material that can serve as a happy medium for fungus. For several years, we used dried leaves in the bottom of our snipe-arium (a long aquarium on a stand, for shorebirds) and none of its inhabitants ever contracted asper. But I have had to throw out plastic bags full of raked leaves because they had just enough moisture when bagged that they smelled moldy when we opened the bags. I don't think we'll use leaves any more.

Chris Maack Bird Treatment & Learning Center Anchorage, AK [email protected]