Thinking of trying this for French Moult

[skysmum]

As most of you know one of my buds has French Moult, he is 12 and each year of his life its got progressively worse.

Ive done endless reading about this over the years trying to understand it. The truth is, i think, no one does understand it.

An interesting event happened last week when Jo dropped 2 large tail feathers. I had my glasses on when i picked them up and noticed how the shaft looked, it was very damaged and had dried blood running through it and it was very brittle with chew marks running up the shaft. Now he does chew on them more than my other buds chew their feathers because of the way they stick out at different angles and irritate him.

This reminded me of an article i had read some time ago but cast aside from the Hamilton And District BS by a DR Armour, an English Budgie expert. I found it again and began to read.

He doesn't agree that it is a virus but its caused by a mite which resembles the grain mite, it gnaws through the shaft of the feathers causing an infection which irritates the skin which in turn causes the bird to chew its feathers and skin and a vicious cycle is started.
Only the other day i noticed that Jo had had another small bleed under his wing and his skin looked sore.

Now i treat all my buds for mites regularly because they live in the aviary outside for part of the year so this hadn't occurred to me before and my others are all fine so how can it be a mite that causes FM and just affects one bird ?.
But im willing to try anything if its safe and could help him.
Dr Armour suggests that the only thing that kills these mites is Chloroxylenol.

Ive done a little research into this and its found in Dettol, a little more research and ive found people who use a very diluted dettol spray as a general cleansing thing for their birds feathers.

Now im not recommending this to anyone but its something i feel i would like to try to help Jo i just need to be sure of the dilution and im still looking into Chloroxylenol in different forms to be sure of safety.

Im still looking into it so will let you know what i come up with.

[starlingqueen]

Interesting theory. I would question it's validity due to the different degrees of severity. My FM is not badly affected but still loses his feathers, mainly his tail. He doesn't chew them, the shafts are just very thin and brittle. Also what would cause the birds to be so much smaller than normal and why are certain birds, even those in the same nest, unaffected?

If you can find a safe dilution and think it's worth a go then I hope you find it helps. Fingers crossed for you.

[ffiscool]

Could you contact the Dr that wrote it? He might answer if you can find him

[skysmum]

These are my thoughts on it SQ, why just one, surely mites would affect them all. He mentioned one bird being affected more because of a lower immunity. Jo was the only one of 5 babies from the same parents that was affected.

[starlingqueen]

Mar 4, 2014 23:56:12 GMT skysmum said:

These are my thoughts on it SQ, why just one, surely mites would affect them all. He mentioned one bird being affected more because of a lower immunity. Jo was the only one of 5 babies from the same parents that was affected.

It's an infuriating subject. If only we knew for certain we could know one way or the other if there is any treatment.

[Hezz]

My question to that theory would be, in your case skysmum, is why would this still be occurring 12 years later? I am sure that Jo would stop picking at the feathers if they weren't bothering him in the first place. So even if the pick and bite routine became more of a habit than an irritation, don't you think he would have gotten over it twelve years on??? I think so, remembering the budgies are not as susceptible to feather-plucking as the bigger parrots, and is quite rare in budgies.

[BudgiesBuddy]

What do you think @corie ?

[skysmum]

Its a minefield and i think im just confusing myself. But my theory is that if it is a mite and apparently hosting on him alone my routine preventative treatment isn't enough. If he is left with just one or two the whole process just goes on.

I got to thinking does it get better after the routine treatment, it possibly does, this is when the new feathers start to grow in but after a couple of months off we go again.

Im wary of the Dettol rout as there seems to be some controversy on safety but what i have found is that Chloroxylenol is the same compound make up as Permethrin which is in the Johnsons anti-mite spray. So today im starting a weekly treatment for 4 weeks to see what happens.
Ive got nothing to loose .

[Budgies Retreat]

Perhaps these mites do only live/breed on a single chosen host at a time, or is it that the mite is no longer there and moved on etc, but the bird carries the disease throughout it's life?
I'd try and see if this Dr can be contacted and try and speak/liaise with him, and I hope you get your answers, and no doubt it will clearly help a lot of people and birds, even if only to soothe the skin.

[starlingqueen]

If it were mites they would have been seen under a microscope by now, surly.

[Deleted]

If it is a mite, it's a possibility that something produced by most budgies keeps the mites at bay, but those with French Moult don't produce the correct chemical, perhaps for genetic reasons. I doubt it though. Munchy's biggest flights used to look how you describe, Skysmum, but he would never bite them until they were part broken and thus needed removing, and his cleared up when he moulted. So his couldn't have been mites because I never treated him with anything. I thought maybe it was a lack of protein in his case, but Jo's so well cared for that that can't be the case for him.

Trouble is, I'm not sure how much research can be done into this. I could potentially request a PhD on it, but I'd need to acquire budgies with the condition for breeding and messing around with, which I don't really like the idea of doing, plus I would probably struggle to convince a research group to take me on for a case on budgies when it doesn't threaten human health. Although, our parasitology lecturer is pet-mad so maybe I could convince her even though it doesn't relate to dogs

I'll have a look for some science papers and see if they say anything new.


Edit: Seems to be quite a bit on PBFD, which keeps coming up because it's "clinically and pathologically identical" to French Moult.

Edit2: I'm fairly confused just by the fact that French Moult, Psittacine Beak and Feather Disease, and Budgerigar Fledgling Disease as seem to bring up similar results. French Moult is supposed to be linked to BFD, but all the literature is quite old.

[starlingqueen]

Could it be something in their genes that prevents the uptake of some nutrient that causes the small size and the lack of good feathers? Just a thought.

[Deleted]

That's a possibility, Starlingqueen. Could be similar to us not getting enough VitD to be able to absorb calcium, or more like types of diabetes where the insulin receptors don't work well so you have to bombard them with insulin to get enough of an effect.

[starlingqueen]

It would make sense as not all siblings are affected and it could be caused by genetics like we have downs syndrome in maybe one child and not the rest or some children have eczema or autism. Not exactly the same but the principle is there. It would be so brilliant if we could solve this conundrum.

[Deleted]

Mar 5, 2014 4:46:38 GMT BudgiesBuddy said:

What do you think @corie ?

It's not mites i have treated chicks at 7 days three weeks and 6 weeks with no prevail they still have the virus.

My take on it is that most birds have the virus and they build a immunity to it, if you over breed your birds and alot of people do, the birds become stressed and as a result their immunity levels will drop, this is when the virus takes affect and is passed onto the chicks as their immunity levels are still developing.

Every aviary/birdroom has it's own strain of FM, so when new stock is introduced you are bringing in a new stain of FM, now you have to wait about three months as the two FM strains mutate to become a new strain of FM.

Now your birds are immune to the new strain of FM until you bring in new stock then the FM will mutate again.