Respiratory infection help / denagard / tylan 50

[clary7]

A few weeks ago one of my hens got a respiratory infection. I couldn't buy antibiotics in the store and had to order online. It was supposed to come in 3-5 days but came about 10 days later, a day after the hen died. Then a few weeks later another hen got a respiratory infection. This time I already had the antibiotics, which is tylan 50. I treated her for 5 days and she got better. But then a few days later, she suddenly became lethargic and died 24 hours later. I don't know why. She had saliva coming out of her mouth.

Anyways, it's been 1-2 weeks after the second hen died and I am hearing sneezing in my flock. I have about 40 chickens. I saw 3 different ones sneezing. I separated the one that was sneezing the most often because he is a rooster that my dad is butchering in a few days. The other didnt sneeze as much so I didnt separate them. Besides the other 2 though, I can hear at least 2 more hens also sneezing but I cant pinpoint which ones they are.

I asked in another group what I should do, whether I should just catch every chicken that sneezes and do an antibiotic treatment for each of them, but only one person replied and advised I get denagard and treat the whole flock with it. So I ordered it and didnt separate any of the sneezing chickens. The denagard comes today and I can start treatment today.

Here's the thing though... I've been reseraching denagard and there doesnt seem to be a whole lot of info on it regarding chickens. I've read a few other forum posts and it seems like it doesnt actually help that well. I'm worried that I am going to use it but it won't work. So I'm wondering if I should still separate the sneezing chickens and do tylan 50 treatments for them anyways. I'm just a bit hesitatant about using antibiotics because the last hen still ended up dying and we weren't able to butcher her because of the antibiotics in her body. Usually if we have a sick chicken that is still safe to eat, my dad will butcher them and feed the meat to our dogs and cats. We couldn't do that with the last hen, and we didn't do it with the first one because we thought the antibiotics were going to come faster. I don't want to do a bunch of antibiotic treatments and then still have the chickens end up dying.

Just to be super clear, the chickens don't have any runny or bubbly eyes or any of that. It's purely just sneezing, and the two that were more severely sick that died, they had rattly/raspy breathing too. The ones that are currently sneezing aren't so bad yet that their breathing is super rattly. They are not lethargic yet either. But there is something wrong with all the sneezing and I'm worried for my flock since it is so large and we just had 55 chicks hatch today that we will be adding to the flock in a few months. I don't want to have 100 chickens that are all passing respiratory infections to each other. And in case this info helps, the chickens all free range and only come into the coop at night to sleep. They have lots of clean, open space and the coop is not dusty.

I need some advice here because I don't know what the best thing to do is.

 

[Eggcessive]

It sounds like it may be MG or CRD, if the Tylan helped. Both Tylan and Denagard are both used for treatment of MG in chickens. Either one is fine, but I would separate the chickens with symptoms and only treat those. MG stays with them forever in their bodies, so close your flock until all birds are gone. Go up to the top of the page and search forums Denagard for many informative threads with dosage. If you lose another sick bird, send one or two bodies to your state vet to get a necropsy. Here is a list of state vets to contact:
https://www.metzerfarms.com/poultry-labs.html

A good article about MG:
https://extension.umd.edu/sites/ext... Mycoplasma gallisepticum (MG) Infecti....pdf

 

[clary7]

I can't pinpoint all the chickens that are sneezing though, so should I just treat the whole flock with denagard, or treat them one by one whenever I am able to figure out which ones are sneezing? Like I said, none of them show any physical signs like foamy, bubbly, or runny symptoms. Just the sneezing and eventually rattly breathing. So it's hard for me to actually see which ones are sneezing until I just see it by accident while staring at a chicken that happens to sneeze.

Also, when you say to treat them individually, should I use denagard or tylan 50?

And when you say to close my flock, does that mean not introducing any new ones, or not taking any birds out of the flock? We just spent the last year growing the flock to this size and most of the birds are about one year old or younger, only a few are 2-3 years old. My dad sells their eggs for eating, sometimes sells their meat after butchering, and we have also invested in a few incubators these last few months and have been raising and selling chicks (none are exposed to the flock before selling, they stay in separate brooders). I am moving out to my own place in about a year and we have some very beautiful mixed breed chickens that I wanted to expiriment with breeding with other colors and breeds and then take with me. I am going to be really sad if this means I cant ever do this.