Trichomoniasis collared doves any suggestions?

Question

Hello all,

I'm hoping some experts in this field might be able to help or give some light to the situation we are having.We've been feeding the wild birds in the garden for about three years now, and never had any problems. About five weeks ago we noticed two collared doves looking very sickly, and puffed up, one we found dead within a few days and the other was that sick he let us pick him up and take him to the nearest vets. He died within two days, and the vet told us he had Trichomoniasis. We stopped feeding the other birds immediately, and the vet suggested not feeding the other birds for two weeks, we decided to leave it for four weeks just in case.

In that four weeks we didn't feed and kept an eye on the birds we had, the following week after the vet visit we found three more dead doves. No other birds showed the same symptoms. Now we started putting food out again, last wednesday (four weeks to the day), and within a week we have found one dead dove and another sickly dove. So we've stopped putting feed out.

Just to give you an idea of the garden....we have a long very large garden, that backs onto train lines and then onto a allotment site. We used to keep chicks and know the allotment has a fair few on there too i dont know if this disease can spread from chooks to wild birds but thats my only idea at the moment.

We rotate the bird feeder every two days, and change the sites where we put feed down, and only ever putting half a jug of seed out (its usually gone within two hours). The places where we do feed is cleaned with my guinea pig cleaning solution - f10. Prior to the first ill doves, we used to get around 15 collared doves in the garden, alongside robins, finches, blackbirds, bluetits, pigeons.None of the other birds have shown these symptoms,just the collared doves. We don't know what else to do apart from ceasing feeding all together. I don't know much about this illness trying to research as much as possible..any suggestions or insight into this awful illness would be greatly appreciated, we dont want them to suffer any more. :(

Trochilus · Accepted Answer

Hello Elley 
 As you may well have discovered by now, trichomonosis is caused by a microscopic throat parasite, whose actions progressively block the bird's throat so it is eventually unable to swallow food and will die of starvation. It is passed on as a bird, unable to swallow, spits out a piece of food it tries to eat. That piece will then contain the parasite, and if another bird eats the same piece within the following hour or two, it will pick up the parasite as well. With the transmission being fairly instantaneous, hygiene is less important for controlling trichomonosis than it would be in preventing salmonella etc. Still, do keep up with the good hygiene around your bird feeding areas to prevent any other gremlins turning up. Trichomonosis has been known from the pigeon family since time immemorial, and for the past nine years we have also seen it in finches, where it has now become endemic, and has actually caused a nationwide decline in greenfinches. 
 A very high percentage of pigeons and doves carry the parasite, and many never show outward symptoms. These birds can only pass it on to their own chicks as they feed them with regurgitated food. It is only once a bird is no longer able to swallow that it becomes infectious to other birds at a feeding site. Sadly, any bird that feeds alongside such a sick bird will run the risk of infection. This is why we recommend suspending feeding – at least on horizontal surfaces, as these are where the infected particles will end up – for a while in order not to concentrate the feeding birds into a ‘honeypot’ situation where they would run a higher risk of infection. 
 Both collared doves and wood pigeons have periodic outbreaks of trichomonosis, where a larger or smaller percentage of the flock will become visibly sick and subsequently die. These outbreaks rarely take out the whole flock, and it may then be years before another outbreak is seen in the area. 
 Doggie has very helpfully given you the link to the disease pages where you can report this outbreak. Please do so, as reports like yours are essential to our ability to monitor the whereabouts and intensity of known infections, and to identify any new ones that might appear.