Help!!!!!!

Hi everyone. I am new to all of this chicken business. This was my husbands idea as I felt with 4 children 6 and under and 4 dogs I had enough living things to care for. However, as we started the chicken adventure I got very excited and find myself enjoying just watching these chickens. We have 8 chickens. We built a fantastic coop that can house 12 chickens but we are having a rough go. Some of our 8 chickens have contracted bubble eye. We are treating all of them with duramycin in there water. They seem to be getting better and then another one gets it when we try to reintroduce the recovered hen back in. If we separate the sick hen for too long she is being picked on I think. I have one in a kennel right now that was the first to get sick and she seems exhausted and having equilibrium problems. She has made it 3 days and is gradually getting better. What else should I do for them? We have 4 that are 4 months old so are not ready to lay eggs yet and are the healthiest (only 1 got bubble eye briefly but no wheezing). The other 4 are over a year old and were said to be laying before we got them at the beginning of April but they have not laid eggs since coming to our coop. We did take them from a rooster and they now have this pin instead of free range. We are feeding them both layer feed and meat feed with oyster shells. I tried to be as prepared and research as much as possible before getting the chickens. We created a very nice home for them and we are desperately trying to care for them the right way.

I don't know how you feel about your ability to give shots, but since your birds seems to be having a hard time kicking whatever is ailing them, I'd strongly suggesting Tylan 50 injections in the future rather than the Duramycin. Any med you are giving in water will be dependent on how much they drink - so if a chicken drinks a lot, they may get a lot of the medication. If a chicken barely touches the water, then they're not getting very much of the med.

When you give a medicine through injection, then you know exactly how much med it received. Using a small gauge needed (maybe 22 or even an insulin needle), inject about 1/2cc Tylan 50 into the breast muscle for three days straight (alternate breast daily).

The nutrition you provide sounds really good, so I'm not sure why your older birds aren't laying. Yes, they will definitely stop laying if stressed, and moving and a new coop/environment IS stressful. Did the respiratory thing hit the older birds? If so, then that's physical stress. Since they're not laying right now anyhow, you might go ahead and worm them...stressed birds are generally more susceptible to internal parasites.

Do you trust the people you got them from regarding their ages? You're pretty certain that they're not older birds?