16-week-old pullet: pale, lethargic, but no other symptoms?

[jquinby]

Hello all. I hate it that my first post is here is about a possible disease, but here goes. This might be long, but I want to be thorough.

I have a 16-week-old Gold Lace Wyandotte acting oddly. I noticed 2 days ago that she wasn't keeping up with her flock-mates and that her comb, wattle and legs looked pale (as compared to the other GLW we have).

Yesterday morning when I turned them out of their run to range, she stayed behind on the roost, and generally spent the morning moping around inside the coop. I could approach her and pick her right up, which was also abnormal. I quarantined her away from the others with some litter, a small amount of feed/water, and have been carefully watching her regularly over the last 18-24 hours.

• She has no discharge around the eyes or nares.
• Her stool in the quarantine box looks normal - no blood.
• Her breathing seems normal, though it sometimes look like her beak slightly opens/closes to breath. I've moved her box around a little to keep her away from too much heat. When she sleeps, her head bobs up and down slowly and the gaping seems a little more pronounced. When she wakes up, it sort of stops. No wheezing or signs of respiratory distress, but she's not vocalizing at all either.
• No caking around her vent
• No visible discoloration or sores on her comb, wattles or legs. Just paleness.
• No other outward signs of injury
• I felt around her crop and throat area but nothing feels swollen or out of the ordinary there, to my un-practiced hands, anyway.

She's not molting, and none of our flock have started laying quite yet. We have 7 other pullets - another GLW, plus pairs of Black Australorps, Ameraucanas and Cuckoo Marans - and no one else in the flock is showing any strange behaviors.

They're on flock raiser crumbles from TSC, very occasional table scraps, and whatever they find as they range around the 4 acres out back. Coop is dry and pretty well-ventilated. Fresh water every other day or so as the waterers get low. We're doing deep litter + some food-grade DE, and I'm pretty fanatical about smells and dryness.

I've checked all of "common chicken ailment" pages I can find, and nothing really fits. If she's sick, it doesn't appear to have escalated in the last 12 hours. She's just sort of sitting there in the box and nodding off most of the time. We got her and her flockmates from a pretty well-known hatchery in the area, and the rest of them are thriving.

So my questions, finally, are: have I totally overreacted here? We're new to chickens and I wanted to err on the side of safety. Should I continue to keep her quarantined in the absence of any other obvious signs of sickness?

(edited for formatting)

 

[Eggcessive]

She is a bit old for coccidiosis, but they can still get it at that age. Blood is sometimes present in the stool, but not always with some strains of the disease. Corid (amprollium) is the best drug since it treats all 9 chickens strains of cocci. Treat for 5 days, nothing else in the water, and give no vitamins during 5 days treatment. Treat all birds since it is contagious. Corid is a good drug to keep on the shelf when raising chickens. After treatment they are low in vitamin A and K, so giving vitamins and probiotics or yogurt is needed. Other illnesses can look like coccidiosis too.

 

[BantamLover21]

Lethargy and paleness in young birds (at least in my experience--I once had a pullet almost exactly like yours that I treated for Coccidiosis. She went back to normal quickly.) is often a sign of Coccidiosis. Affected birds may or may not have bloody droppings, as only a few out of the nine strains of Coccidia cause that. Whatever the strain of Coccidia, it is a potentially serious condition that should be treated when it is suspected.

I would purchase some Corid (aprol or amprolium) and start treating her. Corid comes in a powdered and a liquid form, and can usually be found at a livestock supply store (it is often sold for cattle). The liquid dosage is 1/2 teaspoon Corid liquid per quart of drinking water, and the Corid powder dosage is 3/4 teaspoon powder per gallon of drinking water. Change the water daily, and continue the treatment for 5-7 days. During treatment, do not give any vitamins in the water, as they can interfere with the Corid's effect. You should give vitamins and probiotics after treatment, though. Improvement is usually seen after 3 days.

 

[jquinby]

Excellent, thanks! On the way home from church I bought some Corid 20% at TSC, followed the dosing instructions I found on another thread here and am treating the whole group now. Crossing my fingers...

 

[Eggcessive]

The dosage I recommend is Corid liquid 2 tsp per gallon and powder is 1 tsp per gallon of water. I usually don't write doses it in quarts because I think you can make a mistake in dosage, since most doses are in gallons.

 

[BantamLover21]

The dosage I recommend is Corid liquid 2 tsp per gallon and powder is 1 tsp per gallon of water. I usually don't write doses it in quarts because I think you can make a mistake in dosage, since most doses are in gallons.

Well, I usually recommend it in quart dosage because most people don't want to make a whole gallon of the water, only to probably dump half of it in a day (because you have to change it regularly). But I understand your point, too.

 

[jquinby]

Is that 1 tsp/gal for the 20% powder? It looked like the prevailing opinion in other threads was a scant 1/2 tsp per gallon.

 

[Wyandottes7]

Corid should help, as I agree, this sounds like Coccidiosis. Just make sure that you don't give any vitamins, apple cider vinegar, or dairy products while using Corid. But, certainly give some vitamins afterwards to help prevent any vitamin deficiencies caused by the disease. Make sure to change the water daily. If your bird doesn't drink very much, moisten some chicken feed with the water to help her get plenty of the coccidiostat. That's what I did when my bird had Coccidiosis, as I wanted to make sure she was going to be successfully treated.

Good luck with your bird!

 

[Wyandottes7]

Is that 1 tsp/gal for the 20% powder? It looked like the prevailing opinion in other threads was a scant 1/2 tsp per gallon.

3/4 teaspoon per gallon of water is the treatment that I've found, except in severe outbreaks, when I believe that it is more. I'd use 3/4 of a teaspoon.

 

[BantamLover21]

Is that 1 tsp/gal for the 20% powder? It looked like the prevailing opinion in other threads was a scant 1/2 tsp per gallon.

The correct dosage (at least that I've heard of) is 3/4 teaspoon Corid powder per gallon of drinking water. But I know that there is a lot of discrepancy among different people as to the correct dosage.