Luckily most of my birds are either subclinical or don't have symptoms associated with the disease. Some of them might not even have the disease, but everyone (except Jasper, unless she comes back positive) is getting treated this time around, regardless. Last time, only the birds who were actively shedding the yeast were treated, but clearly that doesn't do the trick. And, you know how people talk about how brutal the treatment is on the birds? For Rumi and Pollo at least, they seemed completely fine, before, during, and after treatment. Then again, there's still a lot of misinformation out their, even among the veterinary community concerning this disease.
The viral load (yeast load?) in the two girls who were tested (Lara and Birdie) was low, so I'm thinking even the times I have accidentally smeared "contaminated" feces outside of the aviary (we all have birds, so you know how easy it is to accidentally smear feces on your furniture without realizing it, then just wipe it up with water and paper towel instead of breaking out the disinfectant), the spread of the pathogen was minimal.
My mom was researching the disease yesterday while I was busy having my (understandable) emotional breakdown, and it seems that the most common way the disease is spread is through water with contaminated poop in it (as we all know, birds like using their water dishes as toilets), or by regurgitating for each other. And I imagine when they they eat an infected bird's vomit after they've projectile vomited seeds everywhere. Huh, maybe I'll quit giving them millet until they're plague-free, seeing as the little dorks will keep trying to eat the mysterious gooey, yeasty clumps of millet their friends have "deposited" everywhere. As far as I know, Birdie's the only one who's vomiting, and she'll be getting her own cage since she's so immune compromised (cancer, liver disease, and a dying heart).
I've ordered a couple of glass water bottles for the kids (yay glass!), and from now on they're only allowed dishes of open water when they're bathing. Certain individuals (probably Noah) keep pooping in the water dishes, and nobody needs to be reinfected that way.
It's gonna be a pain getting the meds for them (I imagine I won't be getting the meds for several days), so in the meantime I'll be disinfecting the entire house, except for the aviary and cages, just to get the number of yeast spores or whatever down. I also removed the perch I gave Jasper that they'd used before just in case, and I'm going to soak it in Pet Focus cleaner for an hour, and disinfect her cage (Birdie flew onto it a few days ago, but her feet didn't look dirty and I don't think she pooped, so the cage probably has too low of a level of AGY to infect Jasper who appears to be one of my healthiest birds).
I'm going to get my parents to medicate Noah and Rosie so they don't end up hating me.
