Rehabbing a concussed bird

Teresa wrote:

I have now given Ivermectin to the whole flock. Let's hope that will keep the flies in check.

Oh my - when I read this about all the parasites I am glad that we apparently don't have the pigeon fly here - probably because it is too cold in Munich. What I see from time to time is only biting lice and they are easy to get rid of with diatomeen earth.

Teresa - I can really imagine how bad that must be with these pigeon flies!!!

And gorabbitgo - your avatar is sooooo sweet -I absolutely love it!!!!
Wishing all the best for your little Walter!!!

I hope the treatment worked, Teresa!

I'd like to thank everyone here at Pigeon Angels for your help and guidance with little Walter. As of today i'm calling him fully recovered. He's been flying a little bit and our next step is getting to know one another better and to become friends. So far i'm just the scary food-giver person who he simultaneously shies away from and looks to for safety. We're working on it.

I still have so many questions, but i'll move them to a new thread. I'm no longer rehabbing a concussed bird. I'm learning to live with a rescue. And i'm pretty happy with that.

Way to go, Walter and Rabbit! I simply love happy endings!

Feel free to ask any number of questions! We'll reply to the best of our ability, or if we don't know the answer we'll embark on a voyage of discovery together.

Thanks again for the info about the pigeon fly. Not many areas are as badly affected as Portugal is, so the information available to the general public is limited. Now that you've mentioned the link between the flies and protozoa, it makes perfect sense in relation to the number of sudden, usually fatal incidences of canker that resists all attempts to treat it. Coccidiosis also strikes here at about this time every year, and I hope one of these days we may find out how it spreads.
My flock seems to be doing well, and I'm very happy at the thought that they are better protected this year. A big from them and from me!

I am so glad to hear about this happy ending - this is simply wonderful.

Rabbit - it was interesting to hear about the correlation of infections and pigeon flies. This probably explains why the pijjies here in my area are much less suffering from canker and coccidia. And I am very glad about this. I can tell. Maybe there is also a correlation between infestation of worms and the pigeon flies?

Altogether you could probably say that in colder climates the birds suffer less from these typical deseases - would be interesting to hear from other people from various climates about specific deseases?

Good point, Petra! I'll get my thinking cap on for a thread on that.

We've been observing for a while that the disease susceptibility of pigeons in different parts of the world vary a lot, and that's likely to be heavily influenced by the intermediary hosts. The climate must be a factor there, but perhaps not so much in the case of the pigeon flies, as the first time I saw them was in Scotland, and the climate there was much colder than here.
Actually, it was in Scotland that they received the name Soni and I give them. After observing the way they moved, crawling sideways along the wall, Soni commented in disgust, 'That's not a Fly, it's a Walk!'