Possible causes of Death?

[fancyfowl4ever]

Hi Everyone,

I acquired a yearling pair of Opal peas around Easter weekend, beautiful fat and healthy looking pair, good feather, heavy as bricks and spunky.

Had them quarantined away from my other Peafowl for a month, then added them into the pen beside my Midnight BS Trio. They seemed to be doing fine, eating and drinking, testing all the perches, checking out the little hutch etc etc. Then about 2 weeks later (so about a week and a half ago) I found the hen dead, on top of one of the straw bales I have in the pens for entertainment, just sitting on top of it as if she laid down to chill in the sun and just passed away. When I picked her up she was still nice and heavy, not skinny, no poopy butt, no ruffled feathers, no parasites(I just wormed/debugged them when I got them so there better not be any bugs!) no damage of any sort that I could find. She certainly didn't act off at all before I found her deceased otherwise I would have kept a close eye on her.

Chalked it up to a freaky fluke, cursed my usual luck and got on with life.

Well, 3 days ago I found the Opal male in their dust bathing spot dead, again no marks on him, heavy and healthy looking, just looking like he laid down and died in his favorite spot............... I fed and watered them all earlier that day and he was nice and spunky then, checking out the food and preening on a perch afterward....

I am stumped, in 12 yrs of having Peafowl I have never had them just keel over without any sign that they weren't feeling well. And I know to watch with the peas for even the slightest out-of-the-norm behaviour to signal they aren't feeling up to par.

Now I am worried about my Midnights, I don't want them keeling over, so far all are looking good, the one hen even started to lay now(yay, I hope my 2 yr old male is fertile!!!!).
With any of these colours they are hard to come by and pricey up here and I hate spending $500+ on a pair of yearling birds to them just fall over dead.
Getting my hands on these Opals for a reasonable Price took me 6 yrs already and I am really disappointed that I got to have them for all of a month and a half....

Are Colours other then your run of the mill blues that touchy or was this just a fluke?

Anyone have any Idea what could have made this pair die on me?

If I had an Avian Vet in my vicinity I would send in the body of the male for a necropsy, but no such luck and our local farm vets wont even look at anything feathered.

 

[AugeredIn]

It is always hard to diagnose a death over the internet but if we assume the deworming procedure was adequate, you would have to assume either one of three things; they were already diseased in some way when you got them, another parasitic issue arose or they were poisoned by something.

Hard to imagine the first being true if they were otherwise fat and happy when you got them. The second one could certainly be a possibility. When we move birds from one area to another they are exposed to different types of parasite, worms, etc at the new location. This is one of the leading causes of death in peafowl. One would expect, however, that the new issue would not cause them to just drop dead. Peafowl are notorious for being able to put up a good front until they are at deaths door but that is somewhat BS. A person that watches their animals regularly will notice the small things. Given the manner of their death this seems unlikely as well. That leaves poison of some sort. Is their any chance they got into anything?

Lastly, just as a backup, what did you worm and debug them with?

 

[fancyfowl4ever]

Not sure about being poisoned, since before I got this pair the Midnights had access to that enclosure all of last year and early this spring before I locked them out of it and they never had issues. I didn't change anything in that pen other then rake it out and clean it up for the new birds.
I couldn't think of anything they could get at that would kill them.

They did share their pen with a couple pairs of pigeons that have free access to all my aviaries, but I would think if its something to do with the pigeons my midnights would affected too but they have lived together for well over a year now.

In the spring I use pour-on Ivermectin for all my fowl, in the fall it depends on what other wormer I can get my hands on(living in cattle country and Ivermectin based wormers is all I can seem to find at times).

 

[new 2 pfowl]

I'm so sorry about your beautiful birds!

It seems like your first priority is to find out what they died of by having necropsies done?
I know that Kathy often recommends necropsies through veterinary schools - maybe you could contact one of these to find out how/where to have a necropsy done...

College of Veterinarians of British Columbia
http://www.cvbc.ca/cfm/index.cfm

Western College of Veterinary Medicine
http://www.usask.ca/wcvm/index.php

 

[zazouse]

so sorry for your loss.

 

[fancyfowl4ever]

None of those places will take them since I have to ship and Canada post can't ship anything in any due time before it rots(and place that has the knowledge to do it is at least 1300 km away). And like I said our local vets wont touch anything with feathers with a 10 ft pole(their suggestion was to kill off all my fowl just in case its some sort of disease.....).

 

[casportpony]

Sorry for your losses, I know all too well how hard it is to lose one. If you're worried about your other peas I would re-worm them *orally* with Safeguard at 20mg/kg for 5 days in a row (I do 50mg/kg for 5 days, but that's me being paranoid). Ivermectin is *not* an effective poultry wormer and some worms, like capillary worms, require multiple days of worming Safeguard. I know getting medications in Canada can be tricky, but you can get Safeguard paste for horses, right? The 20mg dose of paste is .2ml, so large hen would get .8ml and a large cock would get 1.2 ml and this dose should be given by mouth five days in a row. This amount will kill roundworms, cecal worms, capillary worms, gapeworms and some species of tapeworms.

Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2816174
Ivermectin as a bird anthelmintic--trials with naturally infected domestic fowl.

Oksanen A, Nikander S.
Abstract

To evaluate the use of ivermectin as a bird anthelmintic, 29 White Leghorn hens naturally infected with Ascaridia spp., Heterakis spp. and Capillaria spp. were treated with 0.2, 2 or 6 mg/kg intramuscularly or 0.2 or 0.8 mg/kg orally. Faecal samples were collected before treatment and at autopsy, 2, 6, or 16 days after treatment, when the intestines were also examined for helminths. None of the treatments gave satisfactory anthelmintic results.

Ascaridia spp = roundworms
Heterakis spp = cecal worms
Capillaria spp = capillary worms

-Kathy

Disclaimer: I am not a vet, nor an expert. Consult a veterinarian if possible.

 

[Dany12]

For me : Histomonosis - Blackhead

Your peacocks are immunized and the new peacocks aren't!

 

[casportpony]

It is always hard to diagnose a death over the internet but if we assume the deworming procedure was adequate, you would have to assume either one of three things; they were already diseased in some way when you got them, another parasitic issue arose or they were poisoned by something.

Hard to imagine the first being true if they were otherwise fat and happy when you got them. The second one could certainly be a possibility. When we move birds from one area to another they are exposed to different types of parasite, worms, etc at the new location. This is one of the leading causes of death in peafowl. One would expect, however, that the new issue would not cause them to just drop dead. Peafowl are notorious for being able to put up a good front until they are at deaths door but that is somewhat BS. A person that watches their animals regularly will notice the small things. Given the manner of their death this seems unlikely as well. That leaves poison of some sort. Is their any chance they got into anything?

Lastly, just as a backup, what did you worm and debug them with?

So true!

-Kathy

 

[AugeredIn]

Blackhead is certainly a possibility but usually does not kill that quickly in older birds without indication. Regardless, your worming needs augmenting. They need safeguard orally or via water. Capillaria can kill silently in the manner you noted. Ivermectin will not cut it as a wormer in a new environment. Safeguard is readily available. We use Valbazen orally for newly introduced peafowl and those obviously infected.