Yeast infections and immunity - please read

[Crazy Bird Lady]

I would really appreciate some advice on preventing yeast infections and boosting immunity generally.

This is the situation:
My 14 month old female cockatiel was vomiting. I took her to my avian vet immediately, as I knew this was a serious symptom of illness. She had no other symptoms. The vet did a few tests and found that she had quite a lot of yeast in her crop. He put her on “nilstat” drops .25ml twice a day. No vomiting since.

He also told me that my tiel was quite a rare colour mutation, and that often birds with such recessive genes will have health complications and immunity issues their whole lives. (My poor little girl)

Currently I am over half way thru the oral medication, and I have her separate from my male cockatiel. (very noisy!)

I feed all of my birds sprouted bird seed, sprouted quinoa, snow pea sprouts, legume sprouts, and alfalfa sprouts, crumbles (like pellets), and a little bit of dried bird seed or millet as a treat. I also feed my tiels a range of vegies, but have stoped feeding them to my female cockatiel while she is recovering. Since her diagnosis I have also been putting fish oil into the seed, although I don’t do that every day. They all get cuttlefish and mineral/iodine blocks. They also eat a wide range of Australian native plants like eucalyptus, melaleuca and acacia – but I have withheld any flowering plants from my female tiel as I am not allowing her to have anything with nectar in it – as the sugar content may make the yeast harder to expel.

I have read all my bird books and read a lot of things online, but I would REALLY appreciate any knowledge you have on treatment and prevention of yeast infections – be that supplements, diet modifications, anything. Also, one thing I have read again and again is that a yeast infection is often a secondary illness to something else. after doing a range of tests, my avian vet said that the yeast was the only thing he found, and that he suspected it was due to her lack of immunity from being so recessive. Any ad

I would also be very thankful if people could suggest good immunity boosters that I can give her – again, all suggestions are welcome.

My 6 other birds all appear to be in excellent health, and it is very sad to think that my precious girl is vulnerable to lifelong health problems

[pfinarffle]

Our older Senegal parrot just got over a yeast/bacterial infection of the GI tract as well. Took months of antibiotics! I'm not so sure about any sort of immunity boosters for animals other than just ensuring that your bird has great nutrition. I think to a large extent certain individual birds are and will always be more prone to different illnesses genetically just as people are as well. But ensuring adequate nutrition etc will no doubt go a long way. Other things that've been helpful to our bird: lactobacillus supplementation (like Benebac) as well as adding a bit of organic apple cider vinegar into his drinking water from time to time to make sure his GI tract is too acidic for yeast to multiply. Some people also have great luck with various herbal supplements. We were giving our guy some garlic powder on his sprouts and cinnamon with his oatmeal, both of which supposedly kill off things that aren't supposed to be in the GI tract. Still add those things in the mix from time to time. Good luck!

[Crazy Bird Lady]

Thanks for the info on the Benebac, i will search for it today. However, she is not on anti-biotics, only anti-fungals - anti-biotics will make yeast infections worse, but in your case i imagine there was no other choice as you mentioned that your birdy had a bacterial infection as well. I hope your bird is doing much better now?
I will also add a little apple cider vinegar to the water, i have heard about that before, thanks for the suggestion.
Do you know anything about herbal remedies? i have read about purple gentian on one website, but want to do more research on it before i try it on my girl.
I have read about garlic being a nasty irritant to parrots digestive systems, and would not feel comfortable trying that on my girl. Im not sure about cinnamon, but it is a warming spice and may have the same effect. Did an avian vet tell you to use those things?

[Crazy Bird Lady]

Hey i just posted on the "garlic" topic the right info, i got slightly mixed up, but still.... no garlic for parrots!

[pfinarffle]

The garlic info I got from members of Phoenix Landing. We were putting about an 1/8 teaspoon of powder onto his sprouts daily for weeks and nothing bad came of it near as I can tell. It's onions that can cause issues from what I'd heard. Then again, *anything* given in too much quantity can be bad.

Another thing I forgot in my original post is aloe. Aloe does wonders for GI tracts and other mucous membranes! You can buy organic gel on Amazon.com for cheap. Your bird might not take to it right away and you might have to syringe it. Some birds love to chew on aloe vera leaves directly. If you go that route, though, again, make sure the plant/soil etc are completely organic, ie don't trust what you buy at plant stores!

Our bird is doing totally fine now, highly vocal, hanging in his cage like a monkey etc. I never imagined he'd ever be that way since he was ill when we first got him from his prior foster home. When he was sick, we'd used Nystatin for a month, which made the yeast come down, but he still wasn't up to normal health and still had budding yeast in his GI tract. He also had some mild liver issues, probably secondary to this infection. He was switched over to an antibiotic for another month, Baytril, at which point in time we started giving him Benebac (and there are other such products out there, including straight up yogurt if you'd rather go that route), garlic, cayenne pepper, cinnamon, as well as apple cider vinegar in his water daily. Since his return to health, we're only doing the Benebac and ACV once weekly. We also got him to eat buckwheat sprouts which we'd heard were great for livers. Thankfully he took to those right away and we've kept him on that and other sprouts since. Oh, and he also got milk thistle drops with each dose of Baytril, again for his liver. We'll transition him to milk thistle seeds once in a while just for maintenance of liver health. The other spices we now do once in a while for variety. I think we'll be giving him some aloe vera gel once weekly as well for GI health. The primary issue, of course, was that he had somehow gotten to spoiled food. But many forms of yeast are pretty much everywhere in our environments and it's that immune system compromise from poor nutrition that seems to throw some birds over the edge into illness. Our bird never ate any greens/fruits etc. We're slowly but surely trying to change that, as you can see.

[alight15]

Hey i just posted on the "garlic" topic the right info, i got slightly mixed up, but still.... no garlic for parrots!

er..not sure but I luv garlic...especially the powder since I can put it on so many thing,but when my garlic powder ran out last month I found 2 different kinds..at the store, a white powder which whs what I liked and yellow one which i bought anyway,and disliked...

anyone have input on this? are we confusing one with the other?
(btw,i dont feed garlic/a lot of other spices to my birdy,he usually eats an unflavored version,or in some cases unmustered version,cause I luv mustered too )