Help please! My hen has a respiratory disease.

[IncognitoMode4723]

My 3 year old black Australorp hen(Bertha) has been having trouble breathing (she holds her beak open and pants) and she sneezes a lot, sometimes very loudly. Sometimes she shakes her head, but not very often. She is lighter than the other 2 hens. She had not been laying eggs for about 4 months, but started laying again on 3/28/2024 (for 11 days).

She started showing symptoms on 3/1/2024 – it has been about a month now. My other 2 hens have not shown any symptoms yet.

There is no signs of trauma, such as bleeding, injury, broken bones or anything like that.

I am not sure what may have caused her respiratory distress, although I do recall that the hens may have eaten around a patch of fungus before she got the issue. She has had other problems in the past – bumblefoot (which never got that bad and has since gone away) and she laid a lash egg when she was about 2 years old. Please see my previous posts on the lash egg and bumblefoot for more information.

Where we live (Austin, Texas) the summers get very hot (100 degrees) but right now the temperatures are in the 70-80s, so I don’t think that heat stress could have anything to do with it.

She has been eating and drinking normally. She eats primarily a complete feed (Purina Layena layer pellets) and water. I hardly ever give my birds treats. When I do give treats, I feed them apple, or yogurt with garlic and ginger.

Her poop is normal – it is not bloody or runny. Please see pic below.

I have not really been treating her with antibiotics or anything as I do not know what disease she exactly has. In addition, I am not a very experienced person when it comes to handling poultry diseases, so I did not want to give her a medication without asking for other people’s opinions on what disease she has and what medication to give.

I do not have access to a nearby veterinarian so I am not able to take her to the vet for help. So unfortunately I am forced to treat her entirely on my own.

I have below a video of her as well exhibiting the condition.

I do not believe that the issue is being caused by worms. I read several people saying that gapeworm is not that common, and that sneezing is not associated with gapeworm. I also saw a video of a chicken with gapeworm, and it did seem like she was behaving the same way as Bertha is.

I will link my album where I have some videos of her so you can see the way she is. I also made a previous post about this back in march. You can read it if you want.


https://www.backyardchickens.com/gallery/albums/users/incognitomode4723.642335/

 

[Evadig]

@BarnyardChaos maybe you could come see (I saw you responded a while back so I thought you might have knowledge of what's going on - hope you don't mind me tagging you! )

 

[coach723]

I don't see a poop picture..? If she laid normally after the odd eggs, then it's less likely that was lash material, and more likely that it was a malformed egg. That could have been an early indication that things might be going awry in the reproductive tract, or it could have just been a glitch, which do sometimes happen. So she's laid normally in the last few days?
Worming is pretty safe, if in doubt, I would go ahead and do that, unless you can get a fecal test done to check for that.
Do you feel any bloat in her abdomen? How is her weight, is she normal, or is her keel very pronounced, or on the opposite end of the spectrum, is she overweight?

 

[Sarahh_Janeyy]

My 3 year old black Australorp hen(Bertha) has been having trouble breathing (she holds her beak open and pants) and she sneezes a lot, sometimes very loudly. Sometimes she shakes her head, but not very often. She is lighter than the other 2 hens. She had not been laying eggs for about 4 months, but started laying again on 3/28/2024 (for 11 days).

She started showing symptoms on 3/1/2024 – it has been about a month now. My other 2 hens have not shown any symptoms yet.

There is no signs of trauma, such as bleeding, injury, broken bones or anything like that.

I am not sure what may have caused her respiratory distress, although I do recall that the hens may have eaten around a patch of fungus before she got the issue. She has had other problems in the past – bumblefoot (which never got that bad and has since gone away) and she laid a lash egg when she was about 2 years old. Please see my previous posts on the lash egg and bumblefoot for more information.

Where we live (Austin, Texas) the summers get very hot (100 degrees) but right now the temperatures are in the 70-80s, so I don’t think that heat stress could have anything to do with it.

She has been eating and drinking normally. She eats primarily a complete feed (Purina Layena layer pellets) and water. I hardly ever give my birds treats. When I do give treats, I feed them apple, or yogurt with garlic and ginger.

Her poop is normal – it is not bloody or runny. Please see pic below.

I have not really been treating her with antibiotics or anything as I do not know what disease she exactly has. In addition, I am not a very experienced person when it comes to handling poultry diseases, so I did not want to give her a medication without asking for other people’s opinions on what disease she has and what medication to give.

I do not have access to a nearby veterinarian so I am not able to take her to the vet for help. So unfortunately I am forced to treat her entirely on my own.

I have below a video of her as well exhibiting the condition.

I do not believe that the issue is being caused by worms. I read several people saying that gapeworm is not that common, and that sneezing is not associated with gapeworm. I also saw a video of a chicken with gapeworm, and it did seem like she was behaving the same way as Bertha is.

I will link my album where I have some videos of her so you can see the way she is. I also made a previous post about this back in march. You can read it if you want.


https://www.backyardchickens.com/gallery/albums/users/incognitomode4723.642335/

Are you able to get a hold of Tylosin (Tylan)? It's pretty accessible even without a vet. I would look up dosing for her weight and give to her orally for 30 days. It has very minimal, if any, side effects. It is used for respiratory illness caused by mycoplasma. If that's the issue, it should resolve rather quickly. If that isn't the issue, I would still keep her on it for a full 30 days. I believe the dosage we use is 1ml/kg of a 50.5mg/ml Tylosin solution. (So if you have a 3kg bird you would give 3ml of 50.5mg/ml solution). They have stuff you can put in their water but I think it works better if you administer directly, and my vet has said we shouldn't treat the whole flock.
This is just what I have learned throughout the many illnesses with my chickens. I hope it helps.
Edit to add: mycoplasma can cause egg issues as well, so I think it's worth a try

 

[IncognitoMode4723]

I will post some more videos so you can see how she is doing. These ones are more recent. They will be in the album.

 

[IncognitoMode4723]

I don't see a poop picture..? If she laid normally after the odd eggs, then it's less likely that was lash material, and more likely that it was a malformed egg. That could have been an early indication that things might be going awry in the reproductive tract, or it could have just been a glitch, which do sometimes happen. So she's laid normally in the last few days?
Worming is pretty safe, if in doubt, I would go ahead and do that, unless you can get a fecal test done to check for that.
Do you feel any bloat in her abdomen? How is her weight, is she normal, or is her keel very pronounced, or on the opposite end of the spectrum, is she overweight?
View attachment 3797194

I'll post some pictures of her poo in this thread.

 

[IncognitoMode4723]

I don't see a poop picture..? If she laid normally after the odd eggs, then it's less likely that was lash material, and more likely that it was a malformed egg. That could have been an early indication that things might be going awry in the reproductive tract, or it could have just been a glitch, which do sometimes happen. So she's laid normally in the last few days?
Worming is pretty safe, if in doubt, I would go ahead and do that, unless you can get a fecal test done to check for that.
Do you feel any bloat in her abdomen? How is her weight, is she normal, or is her keel very pronounced, or on the opposite end of the spectrum, is she overweight?
View attachment 3797194

She is a light chicken, but she has been that while. I would place her at about 2. She has been light every since about December of last year. Her abdomen doesn't feel bloated to me. She also has been laying eggs regularly for a couple weeks. I cracked her eggs and took a look inside, I didn't find anything irregular.

 

[IncognitoMode4723]

Are you able to get a hold of Tylosin (Tylan)? It's pretty accessible even without a vet. I would look up dosing for her weight and give to her orally for 30 days. It has very minimal, if any, side effects. It is used for respiratory illness caused by mycoplasma. If that's the issue, it should resolve rather quickly. If that isn't the issue, I would still keep her on it for a full 30 days. I believe the dosage we use is 1ml/kg of a 50.5mg/ml Tylosin solution. (So if you have a 3kg bird you would give 3ml of 50.5mg/ml solution). They have stuff you can put in their water but I think it works better if you administer directly, and my vet has said we shouldn't treat the whole flock.
This is just what I have learned throughout the many illnesses with my chickens. I hope it helps.
Edit to add: mycoplasma can cause egg issues as well, so I think it's worth a try

I'll try to see if I can find some Tylosin.

 

[IncognitoMode4723]

Thank you to all of you for responding. My last 2 posts didn't get any responses. Made me feel kind of demoralized.

 

[IncognitoMode4723]

I'll post some pictures of her poo in this thread.

Here are some of pictures of her poo today: