Post by citywife on Oct 16, 2022 11:52:20 GMT -5
I ALWAYS get my chicks from Murray McMurray hatchery and in 10 years I've never had a single chicken illness or mortality in my laying flock (other than the ones I intentionally cull). So I know nothing about chicken illnesses. But a racoon got into our coop this summer and decimated most of my flock and McMurray was out of stock of most of the breeds I like to keep. So, I went all "buy local" and got chicks off of Craigslist.
I got 20 for me and 25 for my sister-in-law.
The chicks just started dropping dead for no apparent reason. The smallest ones would get lethargic (sudden onset), act like they were cold (but I'm confident the heat lamp was at the right height) then they'd get trampled, and die. I'm down to 13 and my sister-in-law is too (so her losses are heavier). She fed medicated chick feed and I didn't (about the only difference in how we raised them). For about the last 3 weeks the ones we had left were all seeming to do well so I figured (wrongly) that the worst was over and the fittest had survived.
After 3 weeks of no deaths, I integrated the 13 chicks into the 3 remaining hens and 1 remaining rooster from my racoon survivors, and 2 more chicks dropped dead.
My big gorgeous rooster is now down. Finally I have symptoms to report, though, as the chicks exhibited no symptoms until the sudden onset lethargy/acting cold. He has a gurgling sound in his throat, his feathers are ruffled, and he can't stand or walk... he seems to lose balance more than being weak.
About the only chicken disease I know about is coccidiosis and the ruffled feathers, lethargy, chicks deaths seemed in line, so I bought Corid/Amprolium and put it in the water for the ambulatory chickens and directly drenched the rooster. After 2 days of this, so far, he's not improving.
I'm not too hopeful I can save him (which I just feel sick about this whole thing, and sick that I didn't seek help earlier -- I thought the first handful of deaths were "normal losses" and the ones after that... I don't know what I was thinking). But do I need to hurry up and cull the entire flock, warn my sister-in-law to do the same, call the health department and start sanitizing everything? Or is this a treatable something? Please help!
I got 20 for me and 25 for my sister-in-law.
The chicks just started dropping dead for no apparent reason. The smallest ones would get lethargic (sudden onset), act like they were cold (but I'm confident the heat lamp was at the right height) then they'd get trampled, and die. I'm down to 13 and my sister-in-law is too (so her losses are heavier). She fed medicated chick feed and I didn't (about the only difference in how we raised them). For about the last 3 weeks the ones we had left were all seeming to do well so I figured (wrongly) that the worst was over and the fittest had survived.
After 3 weeks of no deaths, I integrated the 13 chicks into the 3 remaining hens and 1 remaining rooster from my racoon survivors, and 2 more chicks dropped dead.
My big gorgeous rooster is now down. Finally I have symptoms to report, though, as the chicks exhibited no symptoms until the sudden onset lethargy/acting cold. He has a gurgling sound in his throat, his feathers are ruffled, and he can't stand or walk... he seems to lose balance more than being weak.
About the only chicken disease I know about is coccidiosis and the ruffled feathers, lethargy, chicks deaths seemed in line, so I bought Corid/Amprolium and put it in the water for the ambulatory chickens and directly drenched the rooster. After 2 days of this, so far, he's not improving.
I'm not too hopeful I can save him (which I just feel sick about this whole thing, and sick that I didn't seek help earlier -- I thought the first handful of deaths were "normal losses" and the ones after that... I don't know what I was thinking). But do I need to hurry up and cull the entire flock, warn my sister-in-law to do the same, call the health department and start sanitizing everything? Or is this a treatable something? Please help!