This is bascially my view after reading Norms info on fm

French moult i believe is a Virus, also known as Polyomavirus. My view is that the virus is both genetically passed on and also spread by enviromental conditions [Dust]. Although genentically linked I have in the past bred with birds that had both recovered from fm and to my surprise all young were normal birds with no signs of fm. Which leeds me to believe that if budgerigars are in good breeding condition and fit will risist the fm virus . Here is where i feel the problem arrises with fm , It will show up in young where the parents are not in peek physical condition the young are predisposed to the ailing health of the parent in the nest in which the virus rears up in the stressed parent and is subsuquently passed on to the young, in which they are just developing their own immune system and so develop the full visual french moult that we see . Even though these young babys have fallen ill from failing immune system in time as they get older and proceed through the moult most young will regrow their feathers and resemble a normal budgerigar, here i say the young bird has recovered and the immune systen has developed to keep the virus at bay, but remember this bird will be genitically weak and once placed under stress will fall ill and the virus will reappear and here in the avairy can be passed through the air in dust particles,which with budgerigars in large numbers create large quanities of pluim dust or down in which viruses can easily spread.

There is also another disease that i believe is linked to or coinsides with fm and that is streptococcal infection, strep is a bacteria that is found in the bowel of the budgerigar and under stress the bacteria normally good turns bad and causes serious disease.of which there are two types the sudden where a bird has a stress factor [cold ,energy down, show].These birds have stained vents and weight loss,dont eat or drink and generaly die within two days.and the on going strep infection where birds eat but slowly waste away, these birds have the feather stains above the nostrals and sometimes are missing flight or tail feathers , i have had birds that have dropped all the flights on just one wing , which i believed to be the fm virus in the adult bird reappearing. I think i saw a bird posted on here a while ago showing all the flights missing on one wing.

If you breed with these birds that have the ongoing strep infection you will most likely come across a diease called yellow belly ,which bascially is a disease where the yolk is not absorded into the hatchling after hatching . The young chick unsally absorbes the yolk in the 24 hours after hatching giving it its first feed , this disease stops this from happening and the chick will die within three days of hatching , its belly will be yellow from the yolk hence yellow belly disease , sometimes the chick will die before hatching from the same disease and this is known as dead in shell, these chicks had an embriyo weakness and die before hatching. There is hope for these young that hatch and if you suspect that you have yellowbelly then you can give the parents an antibiotic in the water just before the chicks hatch , when the chicks hatch the parents feed the antibiotic to the chick and so saves the life.

With all this i believe all these diseases are linked together and one leads to another if the conditions or the stress is not found or changed . All these viruses once obtained are very hard to eridicate and will keep poping up when times of stress are placed upon your birds [breeding],

The solution is up to the breeder you can use these birds and be prepared to treat the sick birds and fix the problems when they arrive or you can select the strong birds that are resisting the disease and breed with these birds and so select and breed with your vital birds and produce birds that are of strong natural resistance to disease. And keep the dust levels down so to lesson the potential to spread the disease, spray your avairy frequently with a i l or coopex to reduce pests and disease.

 

This is just my view and my experiences and I hope some people get something out of it .. Good breeding

An excellent and educational read. Very impressed with the way you have thought this through and presented the information. Very sound basis for your ideas and I am in agreement with a lot of what you have had to say. Brilliant. Thankyou