Treating scale mites for Canaries

[homebird]

Saw this posted on our local bird club forum. What do you guy's think?

ATTENTION ALL BIRDERS:
I was having a lot of trouble with scaley mite.
It was effecting my adult canarys. So after ordering, a product call -scatt. I waited for it to arrive. It was taking a long time. My female bird was looking pretty sick.
All fluffed up in a corner not eating much. I tried to coax her with special treets. Then I got to thinking , Sunlight soap kills fleas on baby puppies at 3 weeks of age.
So I gave it a try.
Rubbed in on her legs full strenth.
3 days later I looked at her amazed. she was back to young smooth legs.( no scale mite)
..........No sign of mites at all..........
So I decided to do my males. They hated me doing this but I just held the gentle, in one hand upside down. Rubbed the soap on and put them back in the cage. Right now they are singing up a storm...........
I CAN NOT BELIEVE IT REALLY WORKED
It was amazing..........no side effects as of yet. It has been a week for my female.
Just thought I would share

[Monica]

Not sure how safe soap is, though I'd assume it might be easier on a bird to use a diluted version of the stuff.... of course there are other things one can try and do.

[homebird]

Yes I agree - There are real medical remedies + cleaning the cages etc for reinfection.

But I was wondering if this treatment could be considered if, like the writer of the note said, they can't get anything right away.

[Monica]

I really don't know, but soap can dry out a birds skin and remove any essential oils that the birds have on their feathers. It's not really recommended to use any type of soap on a bird unless recommended by a vet... Of course, I once did use soap (probably dish soap, if I recall correctly) on Casey, but that was because she got into a pan of oil, which ended up getting all over her feathers... and in the end it took several weeks, and several washes, to get the oil off of her body. It probably wasn't the best thing to do at the time, but I didn't know then what else to possibly do.

[homebird]

So what's the best to get oil off feathers & still have a live bird? Or is it all in the rincing, in the end? What would you do?

[Monica]

Not sure what would be the best thing for removing bad oil off of a bird, but an avian may have a better idea of the best thing to use?

[Samm]

I was watching somethng on Discovery channel a while back, about rescuers cleaning oil off birds caught in an oil spill. I remember seeing them wasing them off in 5 gallon buckets but didn't think about what they used to clean them with. Whatever it was, took the oil off the feathers, because at the end of the show they had a segment showing them turning them loose and they all flew away.

[Dustin]

I found this site that talks about some of the stuff they have used to clean the feathers. I think this one is about the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

http://www.ibrrc.org/pdfs/IBRRC_stats_paper.pdf

On page 4 it starts talking about it.

[Monica]

My family normally uses Dawn Dish detergent for years, so this is probably what we did have at the time when Casey got into the oil.... and I think the stuff was blue?? Okay, maybe I don't have a good memory to back then, but hey, if it was Dawn, good to know it's on the 'recommended list to use'! Thanks Dustin for that link!