We put my son's budgie to bed last night and she looked fine. Only a young bird of 6 - 7 months. This morning, when I took her covers off, the feathers on her head are all matted and standing. She has spent the morning so far bobbing her head up and down, then producing a clear viscous mucus from her beak and throwing her head so it splashes up all over her face and head. She looks generally unwell. Any advice would be appreciated. I have her under a light globe for warmth but being Saturday the vets are not open until Monday and I'd imagine any consultation and treatment is going to add up in dollars pretty quick. A phone call to the pet shop and the guy told me to put some Condy's Crystasl in her water. I have put a small amount (couple of grains) in her water and she has drunk from it.

Do you have any medications on hand? It could be infection of some sort or respiratory.

Do you have any Ivomectin? If so give 1 drop on back of neck. Take any greens etc off her just give seed and water.

Thanks for the reply. I'll have to look into having some medications on hand, going by how quickly this bird went from apparently healthy to very unwell. The good news is that yesterday she looked a lot better and today she is nearly 100% and back to her loud chirpy self. We left the condy's crystal water in her cage for a few hours on Saturday. She was drinking it but we weren't sure of dosage so we didn't leave it in for too long before replacing with clean water. We kept her under a light globe through the day and covered her at night. I was pretty concerned.

Thanks for the reply. I'll have to look into having some medications on hand, going by how quickly this bird went from apparently healthy to very unwell. The good news is that yesterday she looked a lot better and today she is nearly 100% and back to her loud chirpy self. We left the condy's crystal water in her cage for a few hours on Saturday. She was drinking it but we weren't sure of dosage so we didn't leave it in for too long before replacing with clean water. We kept her under a light globe through the day and covered her at night. I was pretty concerned.

So glad she's recovering! That must've been scary.

Did your pet shop say what the Condy's crystal's are for or how they work?

I haven't heard of it for budgies to date, my Dad used it for his pigeons but it would be handy to know just what it does help.

 

 

P.S. nearly forgot to add glad she's recovering and hope she continues to improve.

Edited June 6, 201312 yr by robyn

No. Well not exactly.

 

The man said it would "clean her out". I do know that Condy's Crystals (Potassium Permanganate or Permanganate of Potash) was used by poultry and pigeon keepers but I'm not sure why. It has anti-fungal / antiseptic properties as well as worming effect so I suppose it is sort of broad-spectrum. I can't say for sure that it was this treatment that fixed the bird but she was pretty crook and got better, much to my surprise.

 

Her feathers remained ruffled and she was not looking very good for a little while. The bird is back to normal and healthy after the 3rd day.

 

I’ve just read that the dosed water needs to be changed 3 – 4 times a day as the crystal solution oxidises very quickly and so becomes ineffective. We only put it in her water once and saw her drink from it several times over the period of a couple of hours so we were happy that she did in fact get dosed. We removed green food and just let her have seed. She didn’t eat much for a day or two then on the third day went for her food with vigour.

Condy's crystal can be used for sour crop, but you have to be very careful with the dosage because it is a poison.

Handy to know of things that are readily available to use in an emergency.When a vet isn't accessible.

Nadene I don't know about sour crop? Did the symptoms described sound like it could have been that? Do you know the dose of Condy's for it?

On the budgerigar council of Victoria it says birds vomiting, throwing up seeds. The only thing for me is that there are a lot of reasons they can vomit, which can be fatal so I would be keeping a close eye on her. I will admit after loosing 2 birds to canker which also makes them vomit I do get a bit paranoid about it.

I'll be getting some reading material on diseases in birds. The trouble is that the symptoms are all so similar for many different ailments. I was lucky I already had some Condy's Crystals here at home. It was all I did have other than wormer and we'd done that 2 weeks prior. I will add that at the same time she was ill we had a wild bird (Water foul) chick very ill as well. It has since disappeared so presumed dead. Symptoms were not the same and I think it looked like Marik's Disease, but who knows. I once had a disease go through a flock of pre-laying vaccinated pullets. When I took one to the vet it cost me near $100 to find out nothing. It was around the same time they had to kill tens of thousands of chickens in the farms at Mangrove Mountain and I thought they would want to know. They wanted me to send birds to the CSIRO which is fair enough but when they told me I'd have to pay, I just euthanized the rest of the birds from that batch and stopped keeping chickens.

Edited June 8, 201312 yr by livo