If your chickens have fowl pox are the eggs safe to eat?

I'm just curious and I asked about this in another thread but I would like a larger consensus. Are the eggs safe to eat if the chicken is diseased , does it depend on the disease, and do you try to separate out the chickens showing symptoms or do you just throw away all of your eggs? I am sure most disease doesn't go into the egg, and a lot of your hens may not even be infected but sometimes you don't know if they are sick or not and how do you determine if the eggs are ok or not. I was reading some of the threads on disease and became curious about the egg part.

What eggs you get will be safe to eat unless you are medicating the birds. Then it will depend on the medicine and what the manufacturer says on the label. Fowl Pox will not effect humans, so you cannot get it from your birds. It is spread by mosquitoes and by the time you notice the sores all the birds have probably been exposed to it. It is usually only deadly for very young chicks or very old/weak chickens. It is most dangerous if sores develop in the mouth, because then the bird won't eat and will grow weaker. Keep their strength up by giving them some vitamins/electrolytes in their water. Seperate any birds with bad sores so the others won't peck on her. You can use iodine to treat the bad sores, even the ones in their mouths. Use a dry cotton swab to remove any crust or scab on the sore before dabbing it with iodine. There is a vaccine for fowl pox, but it will do no good after the disease is present. Smith poultry supplies sells it. I use it on any young chicks when they are two weeks old. Older birds will develop an immunity to the disease, but they will still be carriers for the rest of their lives.

Most of the illnesses chickens get are not passed to humans, and even for the ones that do, the germs are killed by proper cooking. That said, I personally would not knowingly use eggs from an ill bird--it just doesn;t make sense to me to proclaim that home grown eggs are better/healthier than commercial ones, and then to eat eggs laid when the hen was at the very least under the stress of illness.

If you are medicating the bird, then the chances of the medicine passing into the egg is pretty high, and if you are sensitive to the medicine you could react to the egg; if you are not, you are still presenting additional opportunities for antibiotic resistance to build.

My girl has fowl pox and she wont eat or drink. My daughter has gotten her to drink a couple of syringes of water but not much. What should I do? She is losing weight rapidly and I am very worried

There isn't much that can be done about fowl pox. It's a viral infection, not bacterial, so antibiotics are ineffective. What she needs is supportive care. Keep her warm. Electrolytes and vitamins in her water will help. If you can get her to eat some hard boiled egg yolk, that would be really good for her. Wetting her feed to make it more of a slurry may help encourage her to eat some.
Other than that, there isn't much to do other than wait and see if she makes it.

Thanks so much!She is drinking very little but still not eating. I really appreciate all of y'alls help

And I M doing electrolytes in her water I have to syringe it to her. She will only take from my daughter

clcantwell83 said:

And I M doing electrolytes in her water I have to syringe it to her. She will only take from my daughter

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Does she have any yellow lesions in her mouth or throat? Where are the pox scabs mostly? Can you post a picture. Wet pox inside the mouth is pretty serious, while dry pox on the skin is less so. Try feeding eggs, tuna, liver, yogurt mixed with her feed with some water, or anything that she will eat.