For the benefit of the newcomers to the hobby, French Moult is a 'disease' in the broadest sense, which affects the full growth of the feathering. In a minor case, the secondary and primary flights including the tail, are prevented from attaining full growth and in a major case this problem extends to the body feathers as well. Every year there are articles in magazines throughout the World on this subject since many top class birds are ruined by contracting this problem. I should like, in this article, to say a few words for and against the various theories which are regularly in print.
There exists three main schools of thought about this scourge. There are those who say that the problem is caused by red mite infestation and there are a few allied to them who see moths flying around and think they could perhaps be the culprits. These are mainly inexperienced fanciers who do not examine the problem deeply enough.
What they witness are red mite in the feather areas, where the French Moult has resulted in blood seeping out of the broken feather shafts at the point where they enter the flesh. The red mite is adapted with a blood sucking proboscis, or tube, which sucks up any available blood it can find. When the red mite appear in thousands to the naked eye, there are perhaps treble that amount which are too small to be seen and they reproduce at a prodigious rate under the right conditions. So working on the principal of "seeing is believing" our fancier states adamantly "red mite are the cause of French Moult".
Unfortunately our friend is wrong in this instance. The red mite appear in quantity on a French Moult victim after the French Moult has manifested itself, not before. In a mixed nest of affected and non-affected birds, the red mite in quantity will always be found on the French Moulters because the easy source of blood is available, and hardly at all in the unaffected birds, even though they are in the same nest.
As to the moth theory, we published an expert report from R.A. Cary who is, in addition to being a very experienced fancier, a lepidopterist of some repute. He is adamant that moths have nothing they can possibly contribute to our problem.
We must now turn to the nutritionists or those who feel that poor nutrition is the basic cause. They all feel that the seed given to our stock is often of the poorest quality, even though it looks good to the eye. They reason that the best grades of seed pass to those countries, where canary seed for example, is used for human consumption and that on the seed grading from one to five, our birds usually receive the 3rd or 4th quality. It has been said there isn't a great deal of Grade 1 quality available and Grade 5 is rejected as totally unfit.
Assuming for the moment this line of thinking is correct, the nutritionalists reason that such poor seed can result in our breeding hens being inadequately supplied with all the carbohydrates, proteins, fats and vitamins, which are necessary to produce good quality eggs. Furthermore, the adults have to have rich enough crop milk to rear their families to full growth without the appearance of our trouble maker.
The third school of thought is, to an extent, in an area of scientific expertise which is beyond my experience. Nevertheless I will in due course question its line of reasoning. The undoubted expert in this area is George A. Smith M.R.C.V.S. George Smith lives in Peterborough, U.K. and in addition to being the key note speaker at the Adelaide Convention in South Australia, also lectured on this specific subject at Caxton Hall, London. His work on the subject is always interesting. He maintained at the beginning that the cause was a bacterium and that this infection could respond to an antibiotic. Having tried many of these antibiotics, one of them, lincomycin, seemed to be the best and he stated that its use both prevented and cured French Moult. It is administered orally in the case of small animals and birds.
Since those first announcements, later experiments now indicate the problem is not bacterial at all but of a mycotoxin origin - in other words the problem is of a "fungal source of poisoning". The effect of this toxic ingestion is that the liver is affected, this in turn having a direct bearing on the growth of the feathers. George Smith's reasoning sounds well, but I notice now that he does not claim a cure by the use of lincomycin. "It may", he says, "prevent cases of French Moult, but in my experience it does not cure chronic cases".
Nevertheless, I feel he could well be on the right track though I would be pleased if he could explain one area of fact to me which I submit for his consideration.
If you are very experienced with the breeding of budgerigars, as indeed are most champions with large studs, one is able to spot the onset of French Moult well in advance of the newcomers to the hobby. Such a person can see by the width of the developing flights etc. that they are shorter and thinner in the feather, instead of long and broad. You know instinctively that the bird is going to have some french Moult problems well before it leaves the nest.
If one turns the wings over and examines the "roots" of the feathers, especially the secondary flights, two factors become apparent. Firstly there isn't the usual 'down' density in that region and secondly, some of the feather shafts are showing signs of 'black deposits' (dried blood) inside them where they enter the skin. I would remind the reader that the birds appear perfectly normal so it is only obvious to the experienced eye.
Some years ago, because I was one of those from the 'nutritional' camp, I pondered on the stage I have just described. If allowed to continue, the French Moult started to manifest itself more discernably with the early stunted feathers and so on. This resulted in the usual "runner" that one couldn't cure in any sense of the word. I realised one of the reasons a 'cure' couldn't be affected after the post runner stage, was because the feather follicles were blocked with the remains of the original feather. This was often sealed over with skin growth, especially in the case of the feathers in primary flight regions. So, still thinking nutrition, I decided to effect the following practice which I still do to this day whenever it is needed.
As soon as one observes the early conditions I described at about the 4 week stage, I strip the affected youngster of all primary and secondary flights and tails - all of them! One does this by removing one feather gently at a time - not in handfuls! You then get your newly "created runner" out on to the floor of the breeding cage, so that it is picking around, and learning to eat much earlier than normal. It therefore becomes dependent on its own intake of food much earlier.
Now comes the important fact. The feathers that have been withdrawn are now replaced by 100% new growth that has no trace of French Moult whatever! This I would submit supports the nutritionalist group completely.
My only reservations are that George Smith's ideas are closely associated with the nest box droppings and the bacterial and fungal infections that may be ingested from that source. It might be that by my techniques, the affected (stripped) bird picks up grit from the cage floor or grit pot and this then aids very quickly the digestive processes which results in the formation of the new unaffected growth. Perhaps on the other hand there is a combination of both ideas. Should the nest boxes be cleaned out at say the 3 1/2 week stage of the chicks' life and be replaced by clean sawdust and some grit amongst it? I don't really know, but it's worth thinking about.
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