Slow crop with ascarids

[BugStalker]

I just made a short tube, like a flexible needle, because I'm not sure this melted tube is as smooth as what I've been using, or about warming it to put directly into her crop.

I'm worming the others, while I'm at it.

About the worm eggs... How do you guys treat the ground, or the coop after cleaning it out, and what do you do with the droppings containing worm eggs? Burn them? Cook them? Freeze them? Hold them for a year, then compost them for a year? Should the droppings during treatment and withdrawl be disposed of in some manner to avoid breeding resistance?

 

[BugStalker]

Sorry to be asking redundant questions. I remember reading these answers, before, in other threads, but I guess I was too nervous to remember. Thanks for helping. I'm still learning how to catch these things early to keep them from compounding.

Here's an update. I kept starting to write one, but never got it posted. I would either fall asleep or something would happen, so this covers a lot.

I didn't think the RIR was quite 6 lbs, even though two scales said so. I have her somewhat trained, so before I gave it to her I had her stand on a balance. She weighed 2.5+kg, which is a little over 5 1/2 lbs. I gave her about 1.4 mL. Her crop wasn't emptying very much at all, and I was afraid the medicine wouldn't get through, but a couple hours later, she was grinding corn, again. Maybe she had crop worms. Another couple hours, and she laid an egg, which I withdrew. I wonder if I can use these as Easter Eggs or something.

Then, she wasn't drinking. I tried pouring water into different containers in front of her, dipping her beak in the water, but she wouldn't have any. I was worried, though I knew I could tube her. I accidentally spilled some on a magazine. She ran over and started drinking from it. Relieved, I poured some in a paper plate next to the magazine, which she drank, and eventually we were at the new water location. I had heard chickens were habitual enough they could die of thirst if water was moved, but they don't seem to have as much trouble if they see others drinking. Using certain containers, especially those with low contrast, with a lone chicken, the trouble seems most pronounced. I thought I'd mention this in case it helps others think of creative ways to show a chicken where a new water place is. Now that she knows the container, I can move it and she finds it.

In addition to letting her graze the baby weeds and grit and giving her water, I've been giving her a variety of soft vegetables, cooked eggs, oatmeal, olive oil, and Rooster Booster Electrolytes with Lacto Bacillus. As she got stronger, she fought the dewormer more and more. I thought it must taste terrible, yet, when a few drops spilled on my pant leg, she ate it off me.

A couple days ago, she started feeling warmer at times. I wondered if it was fever, or if she was just getting warm from being inside or digesting corn. Yesterday, she had chills. I looked for something to give her. She sneezed, so I made a quick immune booster out of echinacea, olive leaf, and garlic. I don't believe the olive leaf actually kills fungus, as some say, but only slows its growth as olive oil does. It's supposed to have other antiseptic properties, though. It's worming effect seems to be fairly mild short term, so I didn't think it would speed things up too much. Raw garlic seems a milder wormer than garlic water, and I didn't use much. I gave her a little last night and again, today. I haven't seen more sneezing or chills. If she had a fever, it was slight.

I was afraid the bad weather would keep her inside. She prefers outdoors. It wasn't long before I could let her back outside, though. I'm grateful for that. She was tearing up the house. She's now comfortable sleeping inside, though she still tries to get to the coop. (Yesterday, she jumped up and opened the outside screen door by herself.) I found that if I turned off the light, she would often roost, even midday. She prefers roosting on stairs. Her weight went down at first, but is now up to 2.6kg. She's done with the 5-day course. Her crop feels better, though still sags when full, and I think she still has a few kernels in it. I'll see in the morning. Her droppings are becoming more solid, though she did have one or two with a bit of liquid, today. I'll try to upload some pictures...

After giving her her first treatment, I went to weigh another bird for dosing, but found a beak wound that needed treatment, first. It was already infected. I check crops mostly by feel, usually when it's still dark, and she sleeps with her head under her wing. When I fed her, she ate with the opposite side of her beak towards me, and I was distracted with monitoring worms symptoms, so I don't really know how many days she had it or what caused it. The birds are fairly gentle. Half of them have picked mosquitoes off of my face without me feeling it, so I find it hard to believe it was violence from another chicken, though there are some squabbles. Anyway, I cleaned the area with peroxide and applied Neosporin, then weighed her and administered the dewormer. I don't have enough room in the house to keep two birds quarantined separately, so I tried to make a little temporary quarantine shelter outside. It was late by this time, and I was worried that it wasn't raccoon-proof, so I guarded it over night, checking the wound, back and forth from the RIR.

One night, I think about 4 or 5 years ago, some crazy raccoons that broke a latch ripped some chain-link fencing out of a wood frame, and untwisted it to get to this and another Brahma. We heard the fight, and stopped one or two young coons from taking one Brahma, but found only feathers of the other one. We looked for clues of the missing chicken until early morning, then gave up the search, thinking she had been carried far away by another coon. On the way back, we found her roosting in a pine tree. I picked her up and looked for injury. She seemed annoyed that I had disturbed her sleep. She was tired, but she didn't have any obvious injury. I returned her to the coop. That day, both birds seemed fine. One of the two was now the hen with the broken beak. I was preparing to treat it again, after checking the flock, and someone told me a raccoon was around the chickens. I ran, but didn't see them before I saw the coon charging in their direction, maybe 40-50 feet away. (The pair had hid in a bush.) When it saw me, it stopped, and ran until I stopped chasing it. I checked on the birds, and they were scratching happily under the bush. As far as I know, this was the first raccoon attack attempt on chickens since the memorable event. (They had switched to hunting cats.) I put a more raccoon-proof cage around the beak treatment spot, and checked the wound often. It wasn't weather-proof, yet. The wind was picking up, so I was putting cloth and plastic on the sides not facing the sun, because she was sunning at the time. She ate some grass, but not enough, and no soft oatmeal, though she was drinking a lot of electrolyte water. I was planning to tube feed her, though I was afraid because her beak looked old and weak and she struggled a lot when I gave her the dewormer. (I wasn't sure if I could tube feed while she was on her side during beak treatment, or if she would tolerate it as well as she did the cleaning. Also, the large tube I have doesn't seem too flexible.) In the middle of the night, it started to rain unexpectedly, and I ran out to put a roof and the last wall on the cage. I put her in a box with straw over cage wire so she wouldn't be on wet ground if rain came through. The last time I checked, I noticed the wound was exuding a little pus. I think while I was getting ready for the next cleaning, it may have grown large and cut off some of her air supply. I didn't think it would grow that fast. It may have been compounded by the strong wind ripping off part of the cage's covering, making a draft, which could have made it dehydrating or harder to breathe. She also wasn't used to being away from the others, or being handled so much, and while she tolerated it pretty well, I'm sure it stressed her. She was also old. I remember her years before she fought the raccoons. Anyway, I found her tongue up against the roof of her mouth. I bent the tip down. She wasn't breathing. She was cold. Her beak seemed rather weak. I know she was old, but I'm wondering if she had scaly mites. I've been checking their legs, but they can also live in beaks. I can cover their legs and bellies with petroleum jelly, but how do you treat the beak-burrowing ones? I don't know that coating beaks and around eyes with petroleum jelly would work...

 

[BugStalker]

She had a few kernels left, and though she ate other food fine, and I adjusted the crop support and made a new cotton one when she ripped that one up, they stayed. My frequent massages and treatments and her neck movements and meal choices finally worked loose a soft lump in the lower base of the crop where it meets that V-shape bone. There may have been a small one on the side of her upper crop/throat, as well. Anyway, the kernels tended to stick to it, which is probably why she was having trouble taking them all in. It was a thin triangle, and one of its points made her crop stick out. I massaged it until it fell apart, but it joined together again in a few hours and was hot. Today, I made the baking soda, ginger, cinnamon etc. mixture from https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/impacted-slow-and-sour-crops-prevention-and-treatments, which dissolved it after a quick massage, and she seems to be doing better, now. Her crop is feeling almost normal.

I expect more fungus/dehydration issues as she works this stuff out of her system. I'll continue giving her the electrolytic probiotic water. For the yeast, I might try epsom salts and/or molasses. I have a little nystatin powder of some kind and clotrimazole 1% cream, though it's for athlete's foot, so I'm not sure if it's suitable. It's a generic form of Lotrimin AF with banzyl alcohol, cetostearyl alcohol, cetyl esters wax, octyldodecanol, polysorbate 60, purified water and sorbitan monostearate as the inactive ingredients.

Hopefully, this was just triggered by worms followed by sour crop fungal growth, and it will clear up with some care.

Thanks for the advice! Any other suggestions are welcome!

 

[BugStalker]

I think I'll avoid using sugary molasses, which could feed the yeast. I might try some coconut oil if her crop is empty enough. (Oil increases the risk of aspiration, so it should be used with care.) Another thing I've heard about is papaya enzymes...

 

[BugStalker]

I don't think she needs the crop support, anymore, but I have it handy, just in case...

 

[BugStalker]

She's making interesting choices:

I gave her free choice garlic cut up into small pieces. She initially ate nearly 3 cloves, and eats about 2 more per day.

I gave her free choice of 3 water containers: baking soda water, Rooster Booster water, and Rooster Booster water with Epsom salts and lemon juice. She tried them all and drank the last one up. I also tried just water and lemon juice, and she seemed to like that one almost as much.

I tried large/coarse sand for inside grit. She started eating a lot of it. She would go back and forth between food and sand. I covered it up because I figured everything in her crop is sandy, and she was still eating it.

She wants grain, but I try not to let her have it. I give her a bit of oatmeal once in a while. She mostly eats eggs and greens. Last night, I gave her a few small radish pieces.

 

[BugStalker]

She left a huge 48.7 gram (1/10th of a lb, or 1.7 ounces) dropping full of grit.

 

[BugStalker]

She did almost recover, with 3 early mornings of empty crops, but a little fluid coming back in before she ate or drank.

Now, the flock has a problem. I don't know if it is related. Does this look like Marek's? (Hopefully these are good enough to see. They are rotated, and looking up or down, and were hard to focus.) The only common symptoms seem to be a temporarily slow crop that lasts for a day or two, and was barely noticeable in one, and their eyes, which all seem to have become redder in the last few days, after I noticed them holding out their wings as if they were hot for a few minutes, then putting them back:

This started with a Buff Orpington, who was exposed to some dust I was removing from the henhouse when she came in to lay an egg. After she came out, and the next morning, her nostrils were a bit dark with dust, which I rinsed off with water. (Even though I wore a mask, my nose had a similar issue.) The next day, her nostrils were clean, but she was acting a bit slow. It got cold that night. I found her in a nest box the next morning, and left her to lay for a bit, but instead she had some kind of hallucinogenic episode, apparently, as if she was dreaming about moving things around with her beak or eating. Her eyes were closed. I brought her in and put her under a heat lamp. When I put food where she was picking up imaginary things, she picked it up, but just dropped it, again. When she opened at least one eye, she acted normal, and could see and follow my movements, but she kept closing them and going back into dream land. I thought it could be liver related, because we had had other animals with similar problems recently. We think it's the water (tested high in phosphates) and are installing a system to help correct that. I also considered an infection from the coop dust that moved to her eyes:


This is a Barred Rock with no other symptoms. She had a little tiny bit of liquid in her crop one morning. She lifted her wings one night, for a few minutes, like she was hot, and the next day had a bit of red in her eye. She liked to attack the syringe when I was deworming her, and flipped a drop of dewormer into her own eye, which I rinced with water. (It was the other eye. This is her right one. I'll try to get a pic of it later, but she doesn't cooperate as much as the others.)


And here are the RIR eyes, who had her slow crop come back the day after she held out her wings while scratching for a minute or two. (The crop seems faster every day.)


If it looks like Marek's, I'm going to have a lot of questions. I keep hearing conflicting information. I hear @casportpony and @Nambroth, @seminolewind and others have experience in this area. (I'm not sure how those at signs work.) I'm really confused. Is there something I can be doing, now?

 

[BugStalker]

Everyone recovered. I gave them a little milk thistle for a while. They filled out to their weights.

I dewormed with fenben, again. These three got runny droppings shortly afterward and acted a bit tired. I gave them extra water, electrolytes, milk thistle and a bit of molasses and the Barred Rock lost the problem overnight. The other two still have droppings like below. Sometimes they act normal, running around, preening and purring, and other times they hold their tails down and get sleepy. They aren't eating as much as they should. The buff often pants in a 75°F room, so I try to watch her and give her cool places to regulate it herself.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

 

[BugStalker]

Cecal looks more normal: