Quote: I took one peacock with ear/eye lice and three chickens with what I call feather lice, which are the ones that you can easily see on their vents and other parts of the body. I gave those four birds oral ivermectin @ 1.5 mg/kg. Product used was 1.87% horse paste.
The next day the peacock's lice were gone, but the chickens still had lice. Checked the chickens again the following day and all live lice were gone, though I could find a few dead lice on one bird.
Most ivermectin doses listed are in the 0.2 mg/kg to 0.4 mg/kg range, though some pigeon formularies list up to 1 mg/kg. The pour on is 5 mg/ml and the injectable is 10 mg/kg.
A couple of years ago I tried similar experiments, but I only used 0.4 mg/kg. It was given orally, by injection and topically. None of those experiments worked. I even did one where I placed live lice on a paper towel soaked in ivermectin and the lice didn't die.
I'm not positive, but I think that topical ivermectin is absorbed through the skin and that is how it works, though it may kill lice that walk across it.
Bottom line... given orally to four birds @ the higher dose *did* effectively treat all lice within 48 hours.
-Kathy
Kathy, I'm so glad we have a mad scientist in our midst! You have helped us all so much!!
I have to admit puzzlement over how the lice could walk through ivermectin on a paper towel and not die, but then somehow be killed by ivermectin on or in the bird. That suggests to me that the lice somehow have to consume the ivermectin internally for it to kill them. So perhaps if we are trying to kill all the critters via an external application, we need some other product that is toxic through the outer layer of the pest rather something which must be consumed? Or we just have to make sure that the bird concentration is high enough to kill the bugs when they consume it. But then, what about the non-eating (or non-blood meal consuming) parasites?
The other interesting (and very technical) question that comes to mind in the administration route issue is... if the pest is killed by the tissues having a certain concentration of the medication, and we have two possible routes (internally consumed by the bird, versus topically applied to the bird's skin), is there a difference in the amount of medication the bird acquires in the skin/feather tissue, and how does that affect the toxicity to the pest, and perhaps also significantly, the toxicity to the bird? The internal paste has to go through the stomach and possibly some portion of the intestines, be absorbed, enter the bloodstream, be distributed through the bird's circulatory system to the bird's various tissues and eventually skin and feathers, and then either be consumed by the pest or absorbed by the pest through its own outer covering. With an external application, the medication has to get distributed around the bird's skin and/or feathers (and possibly be absorbed through the skin and then distributed), and then either consumed or absorbed through the outer covering of the pest in sufficient quantity to kill the pest.
Hmmm, aren't lice soft-bodied? Might it take less to kill them with contact pesticides than some harder-shelled pests? idk -- This is all beyond my knowledge base... I definitely need a better comprehension of bird pests.
Any idea whether the 5 days of Safeguard that I just finished chunking into my peas will have had any effect on the surface pesties (external parasites)?
We need to recruit a smart entomologist -- if anybody knows one, give me the address and I'll ship them some peas, gratis
I would never have seen them if it weren't for the magnification thru the cell phone camera.
-- I start itching just thinking about them) Some of them drink fluids from the eyes, some can live in ear canals... there's all these different critters, and I am clueless as to how they are categorized or even what they are.
