At the beginning, I noticed my game hens' chicks becoming sick--not all showed the "eye symptoms" but all had runny noses. A few had swollen eyes. I did a lot of research and it sounds like ILT/CRD. Either way, it wasn't good. After speaking with a friend who is a vet, I made the decision to cull the game hen's flock and treat the coop. The younger birds seemed just fine. My husband(Captain Sunshine) handles the culling because he's doen the farm thing all his life and I just can't handle it.
He said he got rid of them, but set them free in the lower wooded area on our 70 acre farm. He didn't tell me this until 3 days later. I was furious because those young hens could infect the wild turkeys, canadian geese and other wild birds hot to mention, it's hardly humane to starve an animal or leave them as an easy target to predators. I know he just had a harder time because these were young chickens and his intentions were good.
About a week after completely disinfecting the coop/pen, one of the younger chicks begam to have the eye/nose symptoms. Someone on the forum here was going through something similar, and a member told them to use terramycin. I'd seen the terramycin dosage reccommended while doing my research. I tried it for a week. The sick chick cleared up in one day, but I continued to give the entire flock a 10 day dosage to possibly ward off anyone else's exposure becaoming a full blown issue. 1 Day before the last dose, Pearl had the nasty eye. You know the story from there.
The other thing is, I have 7 healthy pullets inside who are 2 and 3 weeks old. They've not be exposed as I use hand sanitizer after leaving the pen, I leave my flipflops in bleach outside the pen and strip down out of my clothes in the mud room and throughly wash my hands again before entering the house. Anyhoo, I have maybe 2 weeks before putting the bab ies in the pen too. My heart breaks to think of them getting sick and/or the older flock continuing to have this problem. I had free range chickens for 7 years and never had any illnesses. This is really tough. Once I give an animal a name, and love it, it's horrible to think of putting them down.
Sorry about the long post. I'm off to see Pearl and Miss Belvedere to give them a shot and some treats.
