Oh right, the adeno virus. Bad manure, vomiting and deaths in a lot of stock lofts. It seems that when the weather gets extreme hot the disease gets more aggressive. A lot of pigeon enthusiasts called us in a panic as a result. The youngsters were quite fat and an hour later they were dead. However it wasn’t only the adeno virus which caused the problems. At the autopsy we also saw herpes viruses! Although that’s interesting for science, it isn’t that important for pigeon enthusiasts because the treatment remains the same. Which measures can you take? Main thing is to keep the infection pressure of the virus as low as possible. You can do this by using a bird cage. Important to know is that the virus multiplies fast as an arrow in pigeons and they discharge it so other pigeons can get infected at their turn. When pigeons are sitting in bird cages the biggest amount of viruses just floats away. The number of stock loft companions which can get the viruses is much lower and this helps a lot in embanking the disease. Disinfect the stock lofts well or burn them daily. That is also a way to fight a virus. But you have to use a decent product to disinfect. I refer to previous articles where all sorts of disinfecting products which kill viruses have been discussed. I will ask the guys of pitts to put this article online so you can read it again there.
But as I said, ‘the flame’ is for a pigeon stock loft to me still the best way to disinfect. Viral infections last usually about 10 days. Let the youngsters build some stamina during that period. I do know that most pigeon enthusiasts want to let their youngsters fly no matter what, but caution has to be foreseen. Let the youngsters make themselves strong. In most acute days you don’t even have to train them. Just let them sit in the bird cage the entire day. After that you can let them out from time to time but letting them participate in races is out of the question. It gains absolutely nothing and the performances will be bad. You infect other pigeons and the young animals have to use far too much of their reserves to cope. As a result you will probably be put back a step. No, let them rest, give them pichones double dose for a week. This enormously increases stamina and in bad cases you better put some antibiotics in the drinking jar to contain coli infections which can be secondary but the cause of death. You will see that this approach works.
Tricho
A lot of pigeon enthusiasts don’t know what to do anymore. For years they put something in the drinking water every two weeks against tricho, but now parasites are hard to contain. Almost at every check-up the pigeons are tested positive for tricho despite being cured. The cause is of course in the resistance. Every other week a light dose of ronidazole leads to having caused the resistance. A small number of tricho has escaped and survived the cure. This stronger race reproduces itself. After a few years this results in a resistant race. We promote a different approach. In this case there are barely two big cures programmed per year. For the breeding and for the flight season. It’s a cure of six days at a good dose (400mg ronidasole per liter water). Besides that there isn’t cured anymore in fewer amounts of days. However at returning home the product ‘thuiskomst’ is in the water. This way we try to counteract resistance. Therefore always curing with the same is bad as I explained before. What to do when tricho still is determined during the season? In this system you never cure blindly. Simply because it’s not needed. If tricho is determined, which is by the way very rare, I use flagyl. A quarter of a tablet every two or three days depending of the seriousness of the contamination. This system clearly delivers. So watch out with small short blind cures. After a while you will pay the price.
