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Some continue to make mistakes (oct 13)

There are those fanciers who read nothing, who do not listen to others, but just go their own way. Kees, not his real name, is one of them. In October he was medicating his pigeons against paratyphoid with Enroshort. He had got it from a veterinarian in the province of Antwerp. The vet had told him that it was very effective against paratyphoid but also mycoplasma. Enroshort would be as effective as Baytril, just a lot cheaper, were the words of the man in white.

Still, Kees thought Enroshort was expensive as well and in the evening, when he wanted to refresh the water with the medicine in it, he did not do what he wanted to do. Why was that? He saw that the drinker was still half full and he found it a waste to empty the drinker with the medicated water in it. And that was completely wrong.

 WRONG
The longer the medication is in water, the less effective they are. That is true for vitamins as well. Those (at least some) can lose their activity even after only an hour. Especially in warm weather and in full sunlight. So the water that Kees's pigeons would drink the second day had nothing to do with medicating. Water containing a medicine must be refreshed daily. If it is smart to treat against paratyphoid in fall is not to the point here. What I want to say is, in case you medicate your birds you should do it the right way. Empty the drinker containing drugs in the evening is a waste indeed, because medicines are far from cheap, but… you have no choice.

 GOOD
What you should do then with water containing medicine? Make sure that the drinker is about empty in the evening and the birds are thirsty the next morning. This is hard to realise when you have say four lofts with and four drinkers, so one in each of them. You better remove all four and replace it by one for all the four lofts. With that one drinker you go to one loft and when the birds have drunk you go to the other, and then to the third and fourth. After that you may make another round.

Thus you will not waste money and you avoid that the pigeons will drink medicated water that is too old and therefore not effective any more.