"Sanitation
  (864) Hygiene; Cleanliness - Dryness (707; 737) and proper hygiene in the loft and flypen are absolute essentials. Without either, sickness of some form will appear and usually in more than one form, complicating diagnosis. When the loft is dry and hygienic and one follows the other simple fundamental requirements, diseases of all sorts are reduced to a minimum ...
  Floor of Loft - The floor of the loft should never be scraped. The days of 'scrape, scrub, and spray' are over. The droppings should be allowed to accumulate until they form a protective carpet of dry powder from one to four inches thick...This covering is dry, odorless, and moisture - absorbing. The moisture of fresh droppings is immediately absorbed in it with germicidal action against most germs. This powder is clean! ..."

Male and female adult worms live inside the small intestine and are attached to the mucosa from which they suck nourishment. This action is what causes anemia and emaciation in the host. A female ascaris can produce up to almost one quarter of a million eggs per day and these leave the bird in the feces. Fertile eggs develop outside the host and become infective after 18 days to several weeks, depending on the environmental conditions. Moist and warm soil favors this process. Development from fresh egg to adulthood takes 2 to 3 month in total and the adults have a life span of one to two years.

The eggs of roundworms are relatively large and have thick walls. While fresh eggs are not infective, developed ones infect the host readily. Should environmental conditions be unsuitable for development, these eggs remain viable for many years and are destroyed by heat more easily than by cold.

Considering the treatment options available in the past, we are fortunate to have better anthelmintic medications available today. Imagine having to give a bird carbon tetrachloride and the like. All too often the bird used to die from the treatment given.

But what was a fancier to do as he noticed his birds loosing weight despite an initially increased appetite and a faster loss of weight later when the appetite decreased due to some toxic effects of a large worm burden. Anemia and emaciation eventually led to the demise of the bird.

Roundworm infection should NEVER be allowed in our pigeons and a simple flotation with a concentrated salt or sugar solution can let us check sample droppings periodically with a microscope. Should that not be available, your veterinarian will gladly do this for $25.- (2004 in Edmonton) and it would be preferable to a "blind cure".

While roundworms are visible to the naked eye and look similar to spaghetti pieces of ¾ to 1½ inches in length, hairworms are much finer and can barely be seen with the unaided eye. However, their presence can also be detected with the same brine float used to check for Ascaris and by looking for a smaller egg than that of the roundworm. In addition, the egg has characteristic bipolar plugs and is not species specific. Other birds may very well be infected with the same species of hairworm or Capillaria sp. As a consequence, pigeons may become infected by sharing the environment with other birds. The species infecting pigeons is usually C. obsignata whose life cycle is direct. The excreted egg needs to undergo development outside the host for 8 to 14 days, is take up by the pigeon, hatches and completes its development in the bird's small intestine. Further development takes place so that adulthood is reached in about 3 weeks. Hairworms invade the mucosa and cause severe damage due, in part, to the inflamation present. An infected pigeon will show obvious signs that not all is well about 12 days after infection. It usually sits huddled in a corner, apart from the flock, with severe diarrhea due to excess mucus production and ruffled feathers to conserve energy. The bird will have little appetite with often a fatal outcome.

complete protective immunity

probiotics.

dry tropical winter weather

sporulated the best!

disintegrate after only 24 hrs

Perhaps some of us would wish we could exterminate these organisms from our lofts or at least strive for keeping the count of coccidial oocyst in the birds' droppings at a very low level but such may be inconsequential for our birds. Consider the study in broilers exposed to identical environments save different concentrations of coccidial oocysts in the litter. It wasn't the broilers raised in the cleanest litter which performed best. It was the ones with an intermediate level of "contamination" who out-performed the others, measured as weight gain. One could argue that broilers derive some benefit from a medium level of coccidial presence and the same may be true for pigeons as well.