Backyard Poultry Forum

Am just new to chickens (have had ducks for years), and bought 30 pullets and 1 rooster from 3 diff places. 1 lot I bought are 4 in No and supposed Barnvelders, which I know now, are very poor specimens of that breed. All the pullets were bought in 3 wk time frame and allowed free ranging when they settled in. Instantly fell in love with their personalities. It has been approx 2 mths since that time and a couple of weeks back, noticed 1 grey girl very quiet, but eating well. Not knowing anything about chickens, I did not know anything was wrong till she got worse. By this time she was having trouble walking and had a bung leg. She was just skin and bone. (Do not know if the rooster caused this)I had someone come one day to buy some peacocks, who happened to know about chooks. On inspection, he found she was covered in lice. So immediately she was treated with Pestene. The next day she seemed a bit brighter but over the next few days did not continue to improve. I had been doing some gentle physio on her leg and hip as well. Hubby said worm her, so then that was done. 3 days later she died of which I then noticed a bad smell and very dirty around her butt. I now have a 2nd from that 4 going very quickly the same way. She has her beak open as well. All the others seem to have no probs at all. From what I have read tonight, it could be coccidosis or Mav. Does anyone have some answers?
Your input would be much appreciated.

Hi Shacbon,
Can you Click Herecopy and paste the checklist back in this thread and answer as many questions as you can. We need some more information to be able to help you with your chooks.

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Erika

Yep, we definitely need more information. It could be many things and we won't be able to help if we don't know more. Try to fill in as much as possible. Pictures would be helpful as well.

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Flock History

· Have you acquired any new birds lately?
· A.all purchased within a 3wk period but from 4 diff places.
·
· If Yes – when
· A.
·
· Do you know if there have been other deaths lately with the same symptoms?
· A.Not here there hasn't
·


Your Flock

· Write down anything you think is suspicious
· A.mentioned that already
·
Examination of the Live Bird

· Check the general appearance
· A.new to chooks, did not notice anything to start with.
·
· Examine the feathers, and the shafts of the feathers for lice and mite activity
· A.1st girl did have lice, but not the 2nd
·
· Listen for unusual breathing sounds (snicking, gurgling) and look for gasping or head shaking that might indicate respiratory distress.
· A.Head shaking in 1st girl only, gaping beak in 2nd
·
· Mouth breathing (panting) is normal in chickens in hot weather.
· A.was not hot weather
·
· Check if the eyes are they swollen, sunken in, bright and wide open or dull looking and closed
· A.eyes bright and wide open, but then closed more often towards the end.
·
· Is there any discharge from the eye, bubbles or froth or crustations?
· A.No
·
· Do you know the age of the bird?
· A. These 2 I was told was about 5-6 mths. The other 2 from this lot I do not see a prob with.
·
· If you're brave you can look in their mouth for any cankers or plaque, this is when your really happy they don’t have teeth
· A.
·
· Are they all huddled up with ruffled feathers?
· A.I do not think feathers were ruffled.
·
· Are they drooping
· A.?
·
· Are they coughing?
· A.No
·
· Are they sneezing?
· A.NO
·
· Are they eating and acting like a healthy chicken?
· A. 3 wks prior to death, yes
·
· If they are laying age, how has their laying frequency been
· A.Do not know
·
· If they are immobile, do they have grip on their feet when you rub their feet as if to perch.
· A.Don't know
·

Look at their droppings.

· You want firm tan/grey with white urates if they are being kept confined and not feeding them greens only grain
· A. Sounds right
·
· Or a firm green with white urates is okay if they are free ranging.
· A.Are free range but droppings not green.
·
By paying close attention to their droppings you can tell a lot about a chicken.
· A.Tan to brown and firm with some white. towards end milky and runny.
·
· Describe what type you have been seeing from the chickens, from coloration to consistency.
· A.as above
·

Besides the general condition of your flock, and the worm issue, we need to also look at their feed and water situation

· Do you have any Ducks?
· A.yes
·
· If yes, do they share the same drinking water and paddling area as the chickens?
· A.are penned separate, but 4-5 ducks do go in chook house to clean up left over food in morning.
·Free range a large area together as far as they want to go.
· Waterfowl cannot tolerate some of the added medications one would find in chicken food.
· A.
·


Feed

· Check the feed
· A. For what, all grain and feed is stockfeed.
·
· Check for mold
· A.None
·
· Check for other contaminates
· A.rats frequent the house which I cannot do anything about. I cannot use poisons and traps due to all the animals. The humane possum type traps they have learn't to avoid. My cats are quite happy to be locked in over nite with the chooks which is great. I have their beds set up there
·
· Have you recently changed your feed that your normally give the chickens
· A.No
·

Poisons

· Check your yard for anything that may be leaking into or onto anything that the chickens can get into
· A.We basically do not use chemicals here.
·
· Algae present in the water can even bring on death.
· A.cleaned every 2nd day
·

Management

· Is the ventilation adequate?
· A.Yes
·
· Are ammonia fumes a problem?
· A.No
·
· Is it too hot or too cold?
· A.No
·
· Is the litter wet or is it too dry and dusty?
· A. I do not believe so.

Medications:

· Have you been giving the bird any medications
· A.no

· If yes, what and how much
· A.

· Do you have any worming medication on hand
· A.piperazine

· If yes, what do you have
· A.

· Do you have any other medication on hand
· A.No

· If yes, what
· A.

From what you have described your bird had been seriously ill for some time. I doubt that it was coccidiosis and that is purely on their ages. However, strange things can happen.

The cause of death could have been one of many things however, we tend to say that one death is an incident, two death in a short time frame is suspicious and three or more deaths is a disease process.

The question about the feed is to clearly get an idea of exactly what they eat and in what ratios or volumes. Over time we have often seen poultry that is sick because it is being fed foodstuffs that is inappropriate for poultry. It is very hard to make accurate diagnosis-es over a computer and then give helpful advise. We can only work with the information that is provided.

Mike

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Retired Now. Have moved and now officially a Tuross Head resident.

This is a strange checklist you used. I don't know where you found it as it is not the one we usually have here.

Can you please let us know what exactly you're feeding? Is it a scratch mix (grains only) or a mash or a pellet? I couldn't really gather it from your answer.

Secondly, I'd probably worm them again but use a different wormer as Piperazine does not treat all kind of internal parasites. Get Avitrol plus, Wormout or Moxidectin plus. You can get them from most produce stores, some pet shops, avian vets or from online shops.
Have another look to check whether all external parasites are gone and treat them again after about 10 days after the first treatment to get any lice/mites that have hatched from eggs in the meantime. You should also clean out the henhouse and burn or bag and discard all the litter, spray it with a permethrin spray and put in fresh litter if you want to avoid them getting lice and/or mites again within a very short time.

Separate any sick birds from the other birds. It's easier to treat or observe a separated bird and you might avoid any infection of other birds that hasn't happened yet. It's a bit hard to say what is going on here but it seems that your birds have had an underlying disease for a while when you got them as they are so emaciated. I doubt it is coccidiosis as it usually affects younger birds only, although it can make a bird the age of yours quite sick if their immune system has been compromised already considerably.
Is the second sick bird very emaciated as well? If so, you might lose it too but you could try beefing it up with excellent feed, avian vitamins in the water and possibly the Rickets diet.

ETA: Ah, Mike has answered in the meantime. I'll post my reply anyway.

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nostress,

All the checklist questions she's used come direct from the BYP thread that the link (given in this thread) takes you to.

There is then another link at the end of that checklist which takes you to a further checklist.

Perhaps those links need to be sorted out & one "new" checklist created if those are no longer as useful as they could be.

Thanks Winglet. To be honest, I never looked at the link at the end of the checklist. I'll check it out and make changes where appropriate.

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Also Shacbon,
Did you worm and de lice them all or just the sick one? I am not really clear from your original post.

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Erika

I answered 2 check lists and gave very detailed answers in the 1st one, I don't understand where it went, as I def copied and pasted here. I did not c& p the 2nd one , which I see is above. Is there anyway of retrieving it. It was the 1st that I went into great detail about and was very time consuming to fill out The one above is the 2nd one, which I did not go into detail, because I did in the 1st. We are getting ready for shearing now and I am finding it hard time wise. As much as I love the chooks, I think now it was a bad move to get them. I have had ducks for 15 yrs and never wormed them once or did any special treatment. They are so hardy and so easy to look after. So little work, just make lots of mess. My head is in a spin at the moment, I was hoping for some answers. We live 45 mins from our vet and was hoping to have known what to pick up for my birds. I am going to throw a spanner in the works now and also add, while feeding them tonight and things were a bit quieter, I think I picked up that 3 of my younger ones may be a bit snuffly, and I think the odd sneeze from one of them.
So my question is, is there a way of retrieving it. ? It was that one that I said, when I went out out to take a pic the 2nd girl had died. I know I clicked on post reply, not quick reply. What is the diff?

I have not had time to delice and deworm them all. Only the 2 in question. The 1st that died was crawling with lice, the 2nd not. Full explanation of my lack of knowlege in 1st Questionare. We checked 3 other birds and found not one louse on them. My hubby wks full time in a trade away from the farm and then we have 335 acre sheep farm to tend to. We are always busy. Certainly do not have the time for this presently. I cannot believe what I have gotten myself into.
Quick answer about food, because I have just over 30 of them, I feed them an equal mix of barley, wheat, layers and sheep pellets. Thru this I mix omega oils. The only diff between ewe and lamb pellets is , the meat/ fish meal is not added. My birds free range as far as they wish to.

don't worry too much some chickens sneeze from dirt/dust up their nostrils, wait that one out a while before reacting

about the lice/worm treatments you need to do the entire flock - same as sheep and you can possible use one of the products that you already may have on hand for the sheep.

do you have an oral drench on hand for the sheep? also what do you have in the way of pour-ons for lice (jetting fluid etc)

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Cheers, Milo.
I observe in fascination a worm move by peristaltic action through the freshly turned earth as I plant out my chilies. Grasping the Annelid I toss it to the waiting pack of beady-eyed vultures and watch the ensuing mayhem while laughing like a chook!

Shacbon, I can't answer your question re retrieving the checklist as I don't know much about the techs but I've asked fellow mods whether there is a tech savvy mod that might be able to help here. So, we'll have to wait and see.

In the meantime, I strongly suggest that you switch your chooks on a proper complete chook feed, at least until they are all strong and well again, but preferably forever. They probably weren't healthy for a start but if there is a problem with there diet, this won't help, of course.
I'm very sorry that you are having such a negative experience with your first chooks. It's true that chooks are far more susceptible to diseases than ducks and that, on top of that, many of the diseases that can make ducks critically ill don't exist in Australia. Despite of that, it is possible to keep a healthy flock of chooks without too much effort - provided that you get good healthy stock for a start and of course that you provide the correct feed and husbandry.

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Shacbon,
I got an answer from the tech support. Unfortunately, the post with your answers to the first checklist can't be retrieved. The reason is that something must have went wrong with the actual submittal of the post. Sometimes, when you type a post and hit submit after you finished typing, it can happen that someone else has posted a reply in the same thread while you were typing and that this person submitted before you submitted your post. If you, once you're ready, then hit the submit button you will get a short notice that someone else has sent a reply in the meantime and you get asked whether you would like to submit despite of that. If you don't realise this and therefore don't hit submit a second time, your post will actually not be submitted. This can happen, it has happened to me as well previously when I was in a rush. As I understand it there is no other logical reason for the disappearance of your post, unfortunately.

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Yes I will get to treating the others when I can have an extra set of hands. Very little spare time in this place. When my hubby spoke to the vet about the type of drench we could use, they said cattle drench. We have some organized via hubbys brother. Just got to get there. Am just rounding up as much info as poss. The trouble is many diff answers on what to use.
Had on the list for tomorrow more layer pellets. Would have thought that a commercial mix would have been inferior to whole grains. One of the q's on the questionare was about protruding breastbones. Have felt most of them and they all feel the same. But the prob is, I do not know...... what they are supposed to feel like. The rest of the chooks seem happy as larry running around and fossicking in the garden.
Anyway shall finish for tonite, so tired.