Paratyphoid

A great many articles have been dedicated to this disease and right so because this disease has caused enormous damage to our pigeon population over the years.

Based on lots of contacts and different literature we can say that even the greatest champions have experienced this disease. Especially in the earlier years there must have been huge losses ; think of for example the fifties and sixties when quality medicines and the vaccine in particular weren’t available yet. But even today treatment remains difficult ; in the course of this article we’ll explain why. From this viewpoint you can put that paratyphoid is one of the most dangerous diseases among the pigeon fanciers ; paramyxo for example is also a very bad disease, but in this case you can secure your dovecote by using a very simple injection.

Paratyphoid is an infectious disease caused by a kind of Salmonella that only causes problems with pigeons and not with other animals, even not with other poultry. The exact name of the pigeon strain is Salmonella typhimurium variety Copenhague and it is remarkable but very important to know that it only causes illness among pigeons. Over the last decades the disease has been found with an almost constant frequency although I’m convinced it has increased during the last few years.

Even with this well-known pigeon disease there are still some points to declare such as for example the beginning of the disease ; the same so for more recently found diseases such as streptococcus gallolyticus ( known as streptococcus bovis), adenoviroses, ….

It is presumed that the bacterium is picked up and hence enters the intestines ; from there it can come in the blood and spread all over the body to all kinds of organs such as the longs, the liver, the testicle, the central nervous system, the articulations … It can also be found in the muscles, the skin and the eye-lids. Only a few of those bacteria are not sufficient to cause the disease. You need millions of them. It takes about two weeks for the symptoms, i.e. very often a wetty defecation, to become clear. I think the entrance in a colony is not caused by the travel baskets but especially by obtaining an infected pigeon which is perfectly capable of spreading the millions of bacteria necessary for infection in the dovecote ; and then by contaminated fodder, drinking water ….. especially with hot weather!

The symptoms are, to put it with an understatement, very diverse and sometimes even misleading, except of course for the very typical signs, which are well-known, such as wing paralisation or limping by inflamation of the articulations. A fast slimming pigeon is also very suspicious if there isn’t any other reason to be found, especially when it occurs more than once.

Sometimes diagnosis can be made easily with such pigeons through a simple bloodtest. This is a very important step in the treatment. Nevertheless, you mustn’t decide too easily with a negative blood test that it isn’t paratyphoid because the agglutine antibodies disappear very quickly after the infection. As such there are a lot of recently infected pigeons that had a negative blood result. In some cases you can see twisted necks with growing young in the nest. One should also think of paratyphoid whenever there are complaints of diminishing condition, worse results, wetty defecation, slowly growing young or complaints of any kind. The problem is that in that case it is far more difficult to make a certain diagnosis.

Blood tests will generally be negative ; the other possibility to come to a diagnosis is trying to breed the Salmonella germ either from a mixed manure sample or through autopsy of the injuries that can be found in for example the long, the liver, ….

In the beginning of this article we stated that treatment is a difficult issue. It is based on 3 principles : 1) improvement of the dovecote + hygiene 2) administering medicine 3) vaccination.

First of all the general hygienic conditions must be optimised, i.e. overpopulation must be avoided, a slatted base is recommendable, cleaning and desinfectating regularly is indispensable, clinically infected and less valuable animals must be disposed of …. It must be said that the high resistance of the Salmonella bacterium creates an extra special reason why control is such a difficult issue; it can survive weeks, even months in manure, roof gutters, earth ….

From this viewpoint it is logical that smaller colonies are less threatened. You can also see that when breeding, the bacterium gets constantly the chance to rife and hence to infect ; thus a more sufficient approach is necesarry when breeding stops. As put earlier, vaccination is an important means for exterminating the disease ; important is the quality of the vaccine, taking into account the aim of building immunity and also the side effects. Therefore applying the vaccination yearly on young doves in big cotes with a high risk of infection is recommendable. Of course administering efficient medicines will also contribute to the elimination of the bacterium.

In general you can state that until today it has been possible to control the problem of paratyphoid in the way described above.

Slobberknocker Lofts

Paratyphoid