I had an outbreak of megabacteria in my tiels in '96, when it was all but unknown in this country. With lots of generous e-help from the Vetafarm folks in Australia, I lost only one sweet bird, thank goodness. It did shut down my embryonic breeding career though. I see that now as a good thing, but it was quite a blow then and a big $$$ investment lost. But, not my point.
You'll want to read Dr. David Phalen's work on megabac, which got it finally identified (in 2001, I think) as fungal and not bacterial and renamed Avian Gastric Yeast (AGY). He thinks the AGY in tiels might be significantly different from what's been found in other genera, and perhaps it even differs genus to genus. I think you can find his articles at the incredible website for Old World Aviaries in Texas.
I used Amphotericin B (Fungizone) with great success. Getting the diagnosis was the difficulty because no one thought to look for this unknown stuff; treatment was easy. And since then I've had a very few cases crop up secondary to other things and have not had it become problematic -- other than requiring a course of Amphotericin B. But that was years ago. Nothing in almost 10 years, thank goodness.
Initially, I did a couple of full flock treatments in water. It required special yellow plastic water bottles to disguise the way the yellow meds stained the water; otherwise the birds wouldn't drink. !!! I still wonder how necessary that was. At the time, I was scared to death of losing all my birds and didn't dare waste any time on trial and error, but I've wondered since.
Treatment was so easy and effective that I've all but lost my fear of AGY. Quite a statement considering the panic I was in back in '96! For years I had a wet slide examined whenever a bird was puny to rule out AGY but have not had it kill except in one sweetie who seems the exception to any rule. She was seemingly fine when I left for work 8 yrs ago and near death when I got home. Rushed her to the vet, who took her home. She died at 10pm. Extensive necropsy analysis of multiple slices of multiple organs didn't reveal any abnormality other than a severe overgrowth of AGY. Both vets (attending and necropsy) felt certain the AGY was secondary to something unidentified. She weighed 120 grams, the picture of a robust healthy tiel hen, but dead. At least 13 of the tiels who shared space with my birds who were killed by AGY are eating dinner now, healthy and happy many years later.
Here's an info piece I copied about 5 years ago from a woman identified only as Linda B, a Canadian who dealt with what she continued to call megabacteria in her flock of (I think) budgies and her list of helpful articles:
What is megabacteria:
- It is named "megabacTERIA" because it looks like a giant rod-like bacteria, but acts and reacts as a fungus/yeast.
Cause:
- megabacteria seems to act very much like candida, in the sense that it's another fungus/yeast which is normally found in the body and is usually harmless. But it's opportunistic, so if one or a group of factors such as environment, health conditions, or excessive use of antibiotics weakens the immune system really bad, then overgrowth occurs and starts causing all sorts of health problems.
Disease process:
- It is similar to yeast in many ways, but damages the proventriculus much like proventricular dilatation disease (PDD) which is a wasting disease characterized by erosion of the digestive system and malabsorption leading to major weight loss and eventually death. Some articles even state that if treatment at a later stage of the illness might succeed in curing the megabacteria and stopping it from doing further damage, unfortunately it is still very likely that whatever damage was done to the proventriculus itself might be irreversible. I think this is where the term M.A.D. is used.
Symptoms:
- Certain foods suddenly become the enemy, making the bird quite sick. Gagging movement is said to be one of the symptoms, but other conditions can cause it too. Vomitting could be involved, but fortunately I haven't really seen that here. However, I've frequently seen fine tremors of the body and wings with feathers ruffled up in the mantle (between shoulders); this seems due to tummy pain caused from certain foods now harder to digest because once the food is digested and voided, the bird looks perfectly healthy, chirping and playing normally. Appetite is obviously affected on some days due to pain, but regardless of whether the bird eats or not, the bird gradually loses weight over a period of several weeks (in chronic megabacteria anyway). The tale-tale sign of sitting in the dish grinding food without ingesting it didn't apply to my birds: they did ingest the food, they even eat the hulls at times, it is just not digested normally.
- SO THE best diagnostic tool and barometer with megabacteria is monitoring the droppings: gewy pitch black droppings occurring out of the blues, especially if 5 minutes after eating indicates that this is caused by the food he just ingested and not starvation, etc. In the case of seed-eaters, there can be a little or a lot of pieces of undigested seeds or seed hulls mixed in a normal-colored dropping (not sure how this would affect pellet-eaters). Smearing the odd-looking droppings on a white paper towel and observing them with a magnifying glass will help you see teensy weensy black speckles (as if something starting to mold). However, I've seen mostly the more obvious ones: a couple of black hyphen-like or hair-like pieces, which means the rods are pretty huge in those droppings. If you set those up on a slide with a tiny bit of mineral oil and observe them under the microscope, you may see the shiny black rod perfectly shaped just like a hair. Sometimes the rods are so long, they appear with a stripe pattern at regular intervals, similar to a bark which has been removed in those places and leaving an off-white stringy portion. At each ends, it often looks as though there are 2 rods glued together, one slightly longer than the other. When I saw this last summer, I didn't know if this was a parasite or maybe poorly digested food, but last December we finally found out these are actually megabacteria rods.
Diagnosing megabacteria by a vet:
- Much like psittacosis, this is shed intermittently, so several droppings need to be tested before ruling out megabacteria totally. All it requires is a normal gram stain but it has to be EXTRA fresh dropping, preferably as soon as it is produced, so taking only the dropping to the vet will rarely work unless someone has a gram stain kit at home. Typical megabacteria rods can be viewed under a microscope at 400x and the severity of the condition can be assessed at that moment, based on the number by field. However, out of personal curiosity (and overprotectiveness of my fids), I have often been able to see details at 100x and 200x on the really huge rods by simply placing those in a drop of mineral oil, despite the fact that my own microscope is a really really cheap one.
Transmission and quarantine:
- It is suspected that it may be transmitted via fecal and feather dust, so quarantine protocol should be similar to that of the most serious feather-related conditions such as polyoma, PBFD, etc. with separate air space, quarantine clothes and shoes, etc. Disinfectants used to treat fungus illnesses should be prefered, although a bleach solution is often the easy and popular method. Vetafarm recommends Avisafe (obviously), which is biodegradable and produces no harmful fumes, so it can be used while the birds are still in the room. I haven't tried it, so I cannot comment on its effectiveness.
Treatment options - medication:
- Fungicides seem the best way to deal with this, Amphotericin B being the most effective. Fungizone is oil-based and it apparently sort of separates; I also try to avoid injections if at all possible. megabac-S (by Vetafarm) is the only water-based amphotericin B, it's not absorbed by the gut and has the lowest side effects to the liver and kidneys, so all those make it the best option according to several sources. It is also sold in powdered form which mean it has a very long shelf life provided it is stored in a cool place. Because of the likelihood that the other birds may be infected or be carriers, the entire flock should be treated. With megabac-S, this is done via drinking water in UV protected water dishes for 10 days. Offering only seeds and NO table food whatsoever, and also turning up the heat slightly will increase the chances that the bird will drink the minimum 6ml/100g body weight. If not, then the concentrations may be adjusted accordingly in case the bird would only drink about 1/3 or 1/5 of the amount for instance. (I have never had to try medication in the drinking water yet, so I hope it will be as easy as it sounds.)
- Aside from the fact that you need to use distilled water, there is apparently no major interactions with fortified foods and megabac-S (which can be a major concern with doxycycline). I also know of a vet who safely used it in conjunction with doxycycline while treating simultaneously psittacosis and megabacteria. However, since your bird recently had giardia and was treated with metronidazole (Flagyl), you should definitely make sure by contacting Dr. Collin Davis or one of his colleagues at Vetafarm, either by phone or email because the distributors I've spoken with couldn't answer my questions and were going to email anyway, so might as well go straight to the knowledgeable source. The general belief is that vets know better, however vets know about illnesses, but they often need the pharmacists' input about the side effects and adequate dosage and pharmacists, in turn, get that information from the manufacturer who does the testing and knows all the ingredients that make up such or such med and if interactions could occur, etc. In other words, if you want the lowdown on a med, the manufacturer is usually THE one to ask.
Other considerations:
- Many articles suggest acidifying the gut with lactobacillus acidophilus, others with unpasteurized apple cider vinegar or whatever, but it seems that these products can only slow down the growth of megabacteria, but CANNOT CURE it.
- As I mentioned before, certain foods suddenly become difficult to digest and even cause either black droppings or normal-colored but with pieces of undigested seeds or food. Those foods rich in oxalic acid or oxalates seem to be particularly irritating to the very irritated (if not ulcerated) digestive system (causes black droppings, i.e. bleeding of upper digestive system). Sesame seeds seem to cause renal and digestive congestion and signs resembling those of gout (causes tremor due to pain until the dropping is voided, crystals in the urine and mild swelling of the articulations on the feet). If congestion occurs, exercise (flying) will help some, but most of all, placing the heat of fingers tips on the bird's kidneys for 5 seconds at a time but making sure not to apply pressure on them though. Recently, eggs and possibly carrots (rich in tannin) seem to cause problems here.
In any case, the best way to know which foods do and do not cause problems to your bird is to test each one and see how it affects tremors and droppings. So far, millet seeds are one of the easiest things to digest, provided certain table foods are provided for enzymes during the day.
- Because megabacteria acts and is treated as a fungus, it only makes sense to use an anti-candida diet, and the first thing is to avoid bread and other bakery products and sweetened foods as it seems to encourage megabacteria growth (causes more rods in the droppings, and probably responsible also for the occasional tiny bubbles or big balloons in the droppings).
- Malabsorption can be caused by a series of things, the most common being intolerance to glucose (lactose, sucrose or maltose) and Caeliac disease which is intolerance to gluten causing malabsorption of fats, i.e. vitamin A. So IF such intolerance is involved with megabacteriosis, then a gluten-free diet rich in vitamin A should help. I haven't had a chance to test such a diet with my guys because the diet I offer has been mainly seeds and veggies at this point.
- Table food, veggies and particularly celery and veggies of the cruciferous family seem to be helpful with various aspects of megabacteriosis, particularly with the malabsorption because they provide the necessary electrolytes and digestive enzymes which seem to be destroyed by megabacteria. Could it be the because they contain indoles or because they are anti-oxydants? Papaya is often said to be helpful in cases of slow crop with chicks, but I don't know if it would help megabacteriosis. Tremors are actually tetany sometimes and may be caused by a minor calcium deficiency, so a drop of yogurt and some kale or broccoli might help stop it. There is a bunch of other natural antifungal, antiviral and antibacterial foods, garlic, etc. which can have some benefits with this condition. I also once read about someone dealing with PDD by feeding pureed food and olive oil (for added calories), so I guess this is option could work with megabacteriosis as well in case the malabsorption becomes too severe (??)
- Trying to make sense of this wasting disease, if I understand this correctly, the weight loss occurs from the malabsorption, because foods slips through the digestive system and nutrients are not absorbed by the body. Consequently, the body tries to get its fuel from carbohydrates, and if not present, then it hunts for the body fat, hence reducing the weight even more and potentially causing ketosis. Ketosis also occurs from anorexia, not eating overnight and exercising. In really severe cases of ketosis, it's a catch 22 because the way to get rid of this is by feeding glucose which could increase the fungus condition of the megabacteriosis, but in these cases of emergencies, megabacteriosis is certainly easier to deal with than death.
So eating, preferably frequent small meals, would be a way to prevent this chain of events. Also a good ratio of carbohydrates and protein should be fed so they can be converted into glucose. This is no time to put the bird on low-fat diets: in case of insufficient amount of fat in the diet, the protein from the heart muscle and brain will be used for blood sugar and they really don't function well on low reserves. So to prevent losing muscle mass, we must add a little fat to the diet and allow at least a small amount of exercise daily which will prevent weakening of the heart and other muscles without causing ketosis or loss of the much needed calories. Among foods high in fats, proteins, and carbohydrates, I favor those rich in the various types of vitamin B because many of them could lessen or prevent the neurological symptoms and most of all, they play a major role in the digestion of foods and their conversion into energy, so that has to be a major benefit when fighting against megabacteria. It certainly seems to help here.
- If possible, monitor the weight EXTREMELY closely as it can go down dramatically within a matter of days, despite all the efforts listed above. Having your own gram scale helps: it can be scarier in a sense, but it also helps follow the condition better so you can act accordingly.
Sources of information:
http://www.talltree.net/birds/ megabacteria.html
http://www.shadypines.com/ megabact.htm
http://www.vet.uga.edu/vpp/CLERK/Son/ http://www.iwc.net/~...wilsonMega.html http://www.oldworlda.../miscellaneous/ megabac.htm
http://www.budgeriga...eases/mega.html http://www.budgeriga...es/megwarn.html http://www.budgerigars.co.uk/diseases/ megabacteria.html
http://www.iwc.net/~.../JlevyMega.html http://WWW.VET.UGA.E...ier/gestier.htm http://www.vetafarm....istributors.asp http://www.vetafarm....tem_number=0042 http://www.aqua-flora.net/Dietx.html http://www.ketosis-k...difference.com/ http://www.vetafarm.com.au/ * * *
I'm guessing lots of those links are no longer any good after so long, but when you're scared, you're willing to do a little work. I'll be watching closely to see what your vet says and how your birds do. From my experience, I would definitely think you have very little to worry about, Kathy. I surely hope I'm right.
gail
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My vet told me that the megabac was a secondary infection. My nieghbors bird has a sinus problem she admitted to using air fresheners and FLY SPRAY around him 
