5th chick dying in my hands right now - help!

[dawg53]

Very glad your husband is getting to the end of treatment, good luck with the rest of it, hope he has a full uneventful recovery yet, your family has really had a rough time.
Finally you at least seem to have gotten an answer on the birds. Yikes with the meds. You are dealing with Mycoplasma gallisepticum? If you keep the current flock and treat, what did they say about the possibility that some would still be silent carriers, giving you a problem if you bring in new birds later? Would any other tetracycline meds work? or if you could treat a smaller number by hand?

x2
Treated surviving birds WILL be carriers. The carriers will infect incoming new birds.

 

[casportpony]

Very glad your husband is getting to the end of treatment, good luck with the rest of it, hope he has a full uneventful recovery yet, your family has really had a rough time.

Finally you at least seem to have gotten an answer on the birds. Yikes with the meds. You are dealing with Mycoplasma gallisepticum? If you keep the current flock and treat, what did they say about the possibility that some would still be silent carriers, giving you a problem if you bring in new birds later? Would any other tetracycline meds work? or if you could treat a smaller number by hand?

x2
Treated surviving birds WILL be carriers. The carriers will infect incoming new birds.

X3!

-Kathy

 

[familypendragon]

Oh yes, I know about being carriers, thank you though. Yeah its a closed flock at this point. So here is what I decided to start with since I can't stomach killing everyone and I also don't have another $210. To avoid any further chicks, tonight I killed all the roosters. I also killed the only two hens who currently show any symptoms. Thanks to all the rain lately most of all my symptomatic ones died on their own :/ I've lost a total of nine in the past 3 weeks or so. So tonight I killed the last 7 roosters and 2 hens. I did a head count and we are down to 34 hens. There are chicks running around but I don't know how many or how they'll fare. But I have nearly a full container of Denagard still. I am going to Clean the big coop out tomorrow, spray everything down with Oxine, then move both flocks into the big coop and keep them shut in for the next two weeks so I can control their water source and monitor how much they go through. I have enough denagard to do 8 gallons of water per day for 14 days. I don't think I'll need that much water each day, but I will mix each batch up fresh each day. If anyone is symptomatic after treatment or becomes so at any time they will be killed. The flock will continue to be closed and I will either end up with them all dead or I'll have a selection of resistant birds that make it and continue to be my pets. Did a little crying tonight, but I put on my big girl panties and got through it.

 

[lovingmyhens]

I'm crying for you as well. Hang tough!!

 

[Kelsie2290]

Sorry for the birds you had to cull, hope the rest of the flock gets though it, and you at least wind up with some nice egg layers and pets.

 

[familypendragon]

Wow, it is sadly quiet here with no roosters crowing. The girls look bewildered. At least the back feathers on my bald back girls will finally grow back in I guess. Heavy heart. Miraculously the boys were able to entertain themselves today without the usual squabbling. Poor hubby has been in bed or throwing up all day from the chemo. He's lost 11 lbs in 2 days. It took all day, but I got the coop scraped all the way back down to bare dirt again. I closed up the rest of both ends of the coop. Normally I have it where they can choose to leave or come on their own if they work for it by flying high enough. But now it is totally enclosed. I moved the water into the coop and raised it up on cinder blocks so they don't throw dirt in it. I got the medication put into the fresh 2 gallons I mixed up. I changed out the bedding in all the nesting boxes. I moved the feed inside too. I got the smaller flock moved back into the big coop at bedtime and will lock them in for the next 2 weeks so that hopefully they can all get integrated back into one flock. It will be much easier to maintain the one large coop and the medicine in one waterer rather than maintaining 2 for just 34 birds. Tonight I was planning to spray down the floor with Oxine but instead ended up running out to a 24 hour pharmacy a few towns over to get sublingual Zofran for hubby. More than likely we'll be taking him to the ER soon if he continues to be unable to keep even water down. Fingers crossed this does the trick.

 

[familypendragon]

Thought I'd share a few pictures I took a quick break during coop cleaning for some shots of my cuties.

 

[MrsBachbach]

Oh geeze, they just called with the total for the meds. It would be $210 to make up 4 gallons per day. That brings the total bill now up to $560! Gah! That is to make up 1500 mg per gallon. So 6000 mg per day for 14 days. I see 100 mg packets for sale on ebay of bird biotic doxycycline for $49 for 60 packets of 100 mg. So that is even worse. I'd need 14 of those! $686 for just the meds!! Ugh! I should just kill them all. I know that. But I don't think I can. This sucks so bad.

familypendragon check out this poultry supply site:

http://www.twincitypoultrysupplies....t&search_in_description=1&keyword=doxycycline

$19.95 for 100grams which is 1000 mg. It still seems like an awful lot of medicine they are prescribing. Will your birds even consume 4 gallons a day?

Or $29.95 for 400grams or 4000mg.

Well, I did a quick calculation and 34 birds at 2 cups of water a day will be about four gallons. Two cups seems very likely in hot Texas heat.

 

[familypendragon]

Yep, I put in 4 gallons this morning and its just about gone. So that appears to be right. Going to give the Denagard a shot and then see where we are at. Thanks so much for your research

 

[Kelsie2290]

You have some pretty birds, like the picture of the EF running. That coop setup looks really nice for a hot climate. Fingers crossed the Denagard does the trick.
Hope your husband is feeling better.