Treating your birds every month with S76 or every 3 months with Scatt isn’t a “preventative” from them ever becoming infested with air-sac mites. Such treatments should only be done once you know that your birds have become infested. It is a method of controlling the population of adult air-sac mites so that they never reach numbers which have the potential of suffocating the bird when they are treated once you begin seeing the typical outward symptoms of an air-sac mite infestation (clicking or wheezing sounds, coughing, sneezing, open mouth breathing or excessive beak wiping). Air-sac mites live in a symbiotic relationship with most wild Gouldians, so it should be expected that the first wild caught Gouldians that were introduced into captivity were infected and once infected it is nearly impossible to ever eradicate them completely. Since Canaries are very susceptible to this mite too, perhaps the mites were transferred from the Gouldians. I do not know if it was common for Canaries to carry air-sac mites before they were kept in close quarters with Gouldian Finches.
A friend of mine told me to treat my Canaries and Gouldians with Scatt or S76 as a “preventative” measure. Is this correct, and if so, how often should I do it?
