Help needed with sulpha dosage

[Ronni]

Hi everybody. I'm from Starling Talk, and hoping to pick the PT experts' brains. One of our members in Australia needs to dose her 8 starlings and 1 blackbird for coccidia. Her vet has supplied 33% Sulphadimidine, but told her he could only guess at the dosage. His instructions were to put it in their drinking water, 4 ml/200ml, and change daily for 5 days. This does not seem an effective way of medicating birds that bathe in their drinking water, drink from their bath water, and eat mostly wet food. The birds are all asymptomatic, (the coccidia were a surprise finding on a fecal test) so it appears there's time to try and find out the correct dose for each bird.

Terry discovered that Sulphadimidine is a brand name for sulphamethazine, for which the Yale formulary gives a dosage for birds (chickens) of 128-187 mg/kg BW sid for 2 days, then ½ dose for 4 days. However, we don't know what the concentration is of 33% Sulphadimidine.

If anyone is familiar with Sulphadimidine, can you advise us of the concentration of the 33% solution, and recommended dosage for passerines?

Many thanks for any help.
Ronni

[TAWhatley]

Hi Ronni,

Thanks for posting here .. I'm still trying to research this .. hopefully one of our P-T med wizards will be along shortly.

Terry

[feralpigeon]

Is this what you are talking about:

http://74.6.146.244/search/cache?ei=...icp=1&.intl=us

fp

[TAWhatley]

WHOA! Thanks, so much FP Really, really, really good find .. exactly what we needed .. Ronni .. are you getting this?

Terry

[Ronni]

Yup......that's the stuff. Have you used it? do you know what the concentration is?

Ok, it says "Initial dose: All species 0.2 gramme per kilogram body-weight. (-0.6 ml of the solution)."
Does that mean that 0.2 g = 0.6 ml? ....so for a 100 gram starling, the dose would be 0.06 ml? Am I reading that right?

[Pidgey]

The "w/v" means "weight per volume" or how many many grams of pure medicine there is per 100 cc's of volume.

Pidgey

[TAWhatley]

Okie dokie .. we need to find an oral dose PER BIRD that will do the job and do no harm. I found a couple of pigeon sites that stated 30 mg of the drug PO daily. ASSuming that 33% contains 33 mg per ml (AND I DON'T KNOW THAT), then 1 cc per PIGEON SIZED BIRD per day would be the dose. For a juvenile starling, then I would GUESS 1/4 - 1/3 cc per day per bird BUT ALSO DON"T KNOW THIS.

More help needed, Pigeon-Talk folks.

Terry

[Pidgey]

So, that would roughly equate to 1.33 grams of medicine in 200 milliliters of water or ~1,333 milligrams (depending on the specific gravity of the solution) per 200 milliliters of water, or 6.65 milligrams of medicine per milliliter of water.

Pidgey

[Pidgey]

Out of the Clinical Avian Medicine, the reference for Passerines is 0.15 g/L in their drinking water.

Pidgey

[Ronni]

Hi Pidgey.....we really can't use the drinking water.

[TAWhatley]

Pidgey and all,

The lady in Australia has this 33% "stuff" and has the instructions for putting it in the drinking water. Unfortunately, the birds are juveniles and still being hand fed .. they don't drink water on their own and only take food from their caretaker. We have to find the right dose per bird for this med so it can be given individually.

Terry

[Pidgey]

Oh, I got that part--it's a protracted study. I was just trying to extrapolate by finding a weight for the bird and the typical water consumption by weight percentage basis.

Pidgey

[Pidgey]

What do these birds weigh?

Pidgey

[Ronni]

Terry, I think they're all flying and able to eat on their own - I think the rat pack (youngest) have gone through their juvey molts. They'd all be adult weight now, I think. I'll double check that with Susan.

[TAWhatley]

Ronni,

One of the things I found was 30 grams of the drug, once per day, PO (orally) for a pigeon. I would reduce this to 10 grams (about a third of a cc ASSUMING I am guessing right that 1 cc/ml contains 33 mg of the drug) for a starling and give each one about 1/3 cc of the liquid. Sadly, we're either gonna kill 'em or cure 'em.

Feel free to chime in here folks.

Terry