Campylobacter...

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Ninksy

Ninksy

Hatching
6 Years
Jun 10, 2013
5
0
7
Hi
I'm new to this forum, and fairly new to keeping chickens too - new enough that I thought I had my husbandry under control but it seems not!
I have 3 bantams who are semi free range (they have a big run that I also let them out of for a couple of hours a day). One wasn't looking well and had a dirty bottom, and hadn't laid for a couple of months. The other 2 then stopped laying. I then treated them with Flubenvet but one of them still wasn't laying so we went to the vets. They did a foecal test, and it came back with Coccidiosis, but more alarmingly campylobacter. I have 2 small children... The vet didn't give me a definite course of action as its my decision, but obviously one option is to keep them, and the other is to have them put down.
Help! I would be so sad to put the chickens down, but obviously my kids come first...
sad.png

Has anyone had this? What do I do?? thanks....
 
No!!! Can it be treated then? I have found v little useful info on the web :( He also seemed to think that it would be a recurring problem if I did decide to keep them...
 
Ninksy said:
No!!! Can it be treated then? I have found v little useful info on the web :( He also seemed to think that it would be a recurring problem if I did decide to keep them...
Click to expand...
How did he determine that it was campylobacter? Treatment for in people is an antibiotic like Cipro.

-Kathy

Edit - I should say that that is what my roommate took when he was diagnosed with it.
 
Last edited:
thanks. yes its been confirmed thru the tests. But didn't tell me chickens could be given antibiotics for it...
 
If it was confirmed by culture, then they probably did sensitivity testing as well... Call him and ask him about the sensitivity results. If I'm wrong, please do correct me, 'cause I'm still learning!

-Kathy
 
Most chickens can have camphylobactor, especially meat birds. There is no reason to treat with antibiotics. You just need to wash your hands very well when handling chickens and their manure. I keep hand sanitizer around my coop, especially if kids visit. It can cause diarrhea, and yes there are extreme cases of terrible illness, but the hydrocloric acid in one's stomach should kill this bacteria unless that person takes acid reducers.
 
I got Campy from someone else's eggs a couple years back. My doctor refused to give me anything for it until my fecal exam came back. By the time they called me 4 days later to pick up a prescription for antibiotics, I was mostly better and never bothered filling it. I was sick a total of 7 hellacious days - probably the worst I have ever felt in my life. Was interrogated by the Health Department via phone TWICE. Good news is I'm probably immune from it now; though I will never get eggs from those people again. It's how I ended up getting my own chickens.

That said, it was really my fault I got sick. The eggs I got were obviously not clean and one morning in a rush I did a cursory rinse of them in the sink, dropped a piece of shell in the egg when I cracked in the frying pan, plucked it out, and still ate them undercooked. Perfect storm of stupidity.

I'd find out how to treat the chickens, wash the eggs from now on, and make sure everyone has good hand hygiene after handling anything related to them. Also try to keep flies out of the house - one study in Denmark found flies are probably the reason they can't really control it's spread in summer and up to 2/3rds of their flocks are infected. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3320412/ Also, 2/3rd of UK raw chicken is contaminated. Not sure about US statistics. The health department here told me it was a more common source of food poisoning than salmonella, but less fatal & complicated.
 
Eggcessive said:
Most chickens can have camphylobactor, especially meat birds. There is no reason to treat with antibiotics. You just need to wash your hands very well when handling chickens and their manure. I keep hand sanitizer around my coop, especially if kids visit. It can cause diarrhea, and yes there are extreme cases of terrible illness, but the hydrocloric acid in one's stomach should kill this bacteria unless that person takes acid reducers.
Click to expand...
I was under the impression that the bird was ill from it and coccidiosis.

-Kathy
 
The coccidia is the reason they are sick. From the info I have read, camphy is in most chickens, and probably more of a threat to people that chickens. It's kind of like salmonella, some chickens have it, but it's people that get sick from it. Handwashing is the real treatment.
 

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