WN>Next question.  A lady in my community is giving away a 12 year old Blue 
r
WN>Amazon, named TJ.  He has psittacosis and had his last treatment today.  
v
WN>heard that Psittacosis is a life long disease that is contagious even 
houg
WN>dormant.  My brother-in-law is taking the bird, if he visits me and 
oesn't
WN>wash very good, is there a chance he could infect my Golden Wing.?
It may depend on how the bird has been treated medically.
I always thought that you could feed the bird mash "flock" recipe of
soft food in specific proportions mixed with seed and doxycycline. This
is the way flocks have been treated for quite some time.
However I was talking to a Florida avian vet, Dr Lee Dukes of the Tampa
area. He quoted research done by Dr Kevin Flammer and other avian vets.
He said that the pink liquid doxyclycline suspension (5mg/ml) also
called vibramycin suspension for human children, given twice a day by
mouth, is the only truly effective treatment to eradicate the disease.
You can see how this would be when medicating a colony or flock or farm.
He said the doxy calcium syrup is the next most effective. Some of this
might have something to do with accuracy of dosage or
digestibility/absorbability of the medication. He said that by the time
you got to the regime of feeding soft food medicated mash you are down
to 60% effectiveness. I think he said this has somewhat to do with the
birds actually eating enough by weight to knock out the disease. I do
not know what the current thoughts are on the effectiveness of the
Keetlife tetracycline impregnated millet seed which used to cost about
$2 or $3 a lb.  Same thing for the various 1% tetracycline medicated
pellets available, such as Pretty Birds Chlortet pellets, and other
brands. Also I don't know much about the new Doxycycline injectible,
except that I was told they were giving it by once a week injections by
the vet (the carrier agent of the solution can leave abcesses if given
improperly I think) and  that the injections were about $25 each or
more. And I think that treatment runs for 7 weeks.
Hope some of this helps.
 * SLMR 2.1a * Famous last words: "Watch me goose that sleeping Dragon!"
--- GEcho 1.00
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