Possibly sick pigeon

[pigeonperson]

Spartrix is an antibiotic. One pill won't completely cure the disease. It has to be maintained in the blood level for a number of days in order to kill most of the trichomonads. It's the same thing with what we usually think an antibiotic is. Nobody would expect to take one pill and be cured. What you read is wrong or is the direction for a prophylactic dose. Give it for 5 days straight. If the bird is having difficulty in swallowing the pill, cut it in half and give it in two halves.

Someone at Animal General Hospital called me some time back and asked how I dose with Spartrix. I said I give 4 pills, one pill for each of the next 4 days. To verify what I had said, they put a call into the Raptor Trust and were told that the dose given is 5 pills. If the Raptor Trust gives 5 pills, I went to the same amount and have been doing that since.

If you have a probiotic, I suggest giving it to the bird at the same time. It helps reduce the possibility of a yeast buildup because like any other antibiotic, Spartrix will upset the natural gut bacteria.

[Flying_Pidgy]

so i give it 1 pill everyday for 5 days?

[pigeonperson]

Yes, one pill a day for 5 days straight. Please don't try to remove the lesions. Let them fall apart on their own. Under them is raw tissue ready to bleed. It takes at least one month from the time you medicate, for the body to reject the canker and heal the mucous membranes that have been destroyed by the little monsters.

[Larry_Cologne]

Hello Pidgey, Pigeonperson and all,

I must have the same source of Spartrix as Flying Pidgey.

I was able to locate some meds at a local German pet feed store, and bought a box of

Brieftauben-Spartrix
in English: Active ingredient Carnidazol.
1 Tablet contains 10 mg Q-Methyl-N-12--(2-methyl-5-nitro-1imidazollyl)ethyl]-thiocarbamat (Carnidazol)
Mnfr: Janssen-Cilag GmbH, address 41457 Neuss
distributed by (or distributor for?) (Mitvertrieb) Dr. Hesse
Tierpharma GmbH + Co KG, address 25551 Hohenlockstedt

Dosing-guidance, Type and Duration of the Application:

Brietauben-Spartrix kommt in einer einzigen Dosis pro Brieftauben zur Anwendung. Letter-Pigeon-Spartrix comes in an only (single, solitary) dose per Letter-pigeon for application. Adult pigeon 1 tablet, young pigeon 1/2 tablet. The tablet is to be put as deep as possible in the beak. (Cost 9.80 Euros or about $12 for 25 tablets).

Nothing about treating with more than one tablet.

Expiration date March 2010 (therefore instructions should be current or up-to-date).(Instruction sheet copyright J-C 1998, package copyright J-C 1999).

Is the 10 mg tablet enough for a solitary treatment, or just for a prophylactic treatment?

I think I'll go with the 1 tablet-per day for 5 days route.

Larry

[Larry_Cologne]

Update to my last post:

After some convoluted internet searching, I found what their dosing instructions are for:

During the "travel time" (racing season) each pigeon should be given a weekly single dose of one Tablet Spartrix, after each flight, to prevent a failure or break in performance.

Spartrix-Tabletten wirken gegen die Trichomoniasis. Während der Reisezeit sollte wöchentlich nach jedem Flug pro Taube 1 Tablette Spartrix als Einzelbehandlung gegeben werden, um einem Leistungseinbruch vorzubeugen. Den Jungtauben verabreicht man beim Absetzen je Taube 1 Tablette.
Packung: Blisterpackung mit 25 Tabletten

http://www.roehnfried-hesse.de/lexik...=46&buchstabe=

So, this is a prophylactic dose for racing or homing pigeons.

Larry

[Larry_Cologne]

Update to my last post:

After some convoluted internet searching, I found what their dosing instructions are for:

During the "travel time" (racing season) each pigeon should be given a weekly single dose of one Tablet Spartrix, after each flight, to prevent a failure or break in performance.

Spartrix-Tabletten wirken gegen die Trichomoniasis. Während der Reisezeit sollte wöchentlich nach jedem Flug pro Taube 1 Tablette Spartrix als Einzelbehandlung gegeben werden, um einem Leistungseinbruch vorzubeugen. Den Jungtauben verabreicht man beim Absetzen je Taube 1 Tablette.
Packung: Blisterpackung mit 25 Tabletten

http://www.roehnfried-hesse.de/lexik...=46&buchstabe=

So, this is a prophylactic dose for racing or homing pigeons.

NEXT QUESTION: Since this is a prophylactic dose, what is the correct dose for treating a suspected or an actual case of canker? Or a severe case?

I ask this, because in Germany one usually needs to get antbiotics from a vet. I suspect this may be a "mini-dose," and this dosage of 10mg may not effectively treat a sick pigeon.

When my 340-gram adult male pigeon Wieteke seemed sick last month, I gave him one Spartrix tablet, and treated him for coccidiosis, which he had previously had in May, and followed it with anti-worming powder put on food. He got better.

Larry

[Pidgey]

The instructions for most of the meds we access from pigeon supply sources are based on flock economics. For instance, I've got a bottle of Enroxil that has a different instructions sticker on it than the one that originally came with the bottle--that's been overstuck by the other sticker. I peeled it off to reveal that the original manufacturer's instructions were "0,2 ml/kg B.W." per day. It's 10% Enrofloxacin (Baytril) and so that translates to 0.2 milliliters per kilogram of body weight per day. Another way of putting that is 200 microliters/kilogram per day or (at 10%) that's 20 milligrams per kilogram per day assuming the specific gravity is equivalent to water. It doesn't say anything about giving it twice a day. There is a further note about when giving it for articular Salmonellosis, you should give it at the 0,4 ml/kg B.W. (400 microliters or 40 milligrams per kilogram of bird per day) for three days and then taper back to the earlier protocol for 10 more days.

Now, if you take the instructions plastered over those, it tells you 8 cc/gallon. Okay, so 8 cc equals 8000 microliters or only 800 milligrams of actual medicine (10% solution) in the gallon. Assuming that the bird drinks 5% of its body weight per day (many of them do) then it'll end up getting 10.5 milligrams per kilogram of bird for the day (50 grams is 5% of 1 kilogram; 1 gallon is 3785 grams; so: 50/3785*800=10.56).

In the formularies (which aren't addressing flock treatment), the range is from 5-20 mg/kg, PO, BID. To convert that to a once-daily treatment, that's 10-40 mg/kg, PO, SID. So, the instructions on the packages are often on the low end of the treatment spectrum, for this drug at least, but I've seen it for others as well. As such, it's good to go looking for all you can about a given drug and take that in consideration when you're treating an individual bird with a full-blown case of whatever.

Pidgey

[Trees Gray]

Why don't you treat the birds with the obvious signs with Spartix, and isolate them.

Then use a flock treatment for the rest.

[pigeonperson]

Larry,
Stay away from instructions dealing with racing pigeons. These people are only interested in performance and what they are doing is sacrificing their birds' health for a winner. To put it another way, they are pumping their birds with anything and everything and don't care about what it is doing to the birds' insides.

One pill of anything is a prophylactic. The fact that the medicine kills weaker organisms allowing stronger, more resistant forms to take over doesn't bother these enthusiasts. If they could give steroids before a race, I'm sure they are doing that too.

The instructions for Spartrix are directly addressing these kinds of people. It is not for treating a sick bird so you will find recommendations for giving a pill perhaps before a race or after a race. One racing pigeon person told me that the birds are half dead already when they are ready to race.

The best thing to do is not treat unless there is obvious illness and that goes for anything. If I bring a bird in from the outside, the first thing I do is observe to try and find out what is wrong. I'm not going to pump the bird with medications that he may not need and reduce his immunity system to just a word in the dictionary. If the bird is 'cleaned out', what happens when he is released back into the wild? His system is clean and his immunity system has been compromised. When he then drinks water, his emptied system is wide open to anything in that water like coccidiosis and canker and anything else you can think of. I used to do that and the birds came right back to me, sicker than when I first got them so no more.

I just took in a 5-6 week old bird who was starving and dehydrated from this very cold winter weather. His droppings are excellent now that he has good food in him. He doesn't need medicating....no cocci drug and no canker drug. He goes back into the streets stronger and just as healthy since he hasn't been pumped full of prophylactic meds.

[pigeonperson]

Treesa,
Do you have anything definitive on ACV making the bird's system an unhappy environment for canker?

[Pidgey]

What I'd always heard was that an acidic environment keeps some bacteria down, notably the gram negatives and that was the reason for treating their water that way. I remember that the notation recommended doing that more as a winter thing, too. That was from a reference a long time ago and it didn't say anything about it having anything to do with canker. Back in summer, I tried testing my water pans for the ferals for canker organisms with and without the ACV in the water. I couldn't get a reliable test because my pans were different types (really need two stainless ones) and I saw that the ACV water had a really bad effect on the regular pan. So, I didn't finish the study until I can find two identical pans of either plastic (don't much like that idea, though) or stainless. One thing's for sure, though--the wild ones don't want to drink the water if it's got too much ACV in it so they just go somewhere else to drink.

Pidgey

[Flying_Pidgy]

so... how much dosage do i give it?

[Flying_Pidgy]

also, it seems like the bird is doing better

[Flying_Pidgy]

here is a picture of her poop.

[pigeonperson]

There's no confusion. Give one pill a day for the next 5 days. She has a bacterial infection from the canker. I hope you have an antibiotic to give her too.