- Apr 2, 2014
- 13
- 1
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I had a 7 week old chick die on me pretty suddenly and I need to know why. She was in with the other chicks until the day before she died so I'm pretty worried the others are gonna get it. I already have a chick that's just recovering from a respiratory thing with vetrx so I don't want her to get a whole different thing. I was ok enough to do an external post mortem inspection of the bird but I'm not quite brave enough to do a necropsy? I'm a chicken first timer doing the best I can and this is really frustrating.
The chick's symptoms were lethargy and fluffing up to sleep at weird times of day when the other birds were awake, and then she lost weight quick over a few days, lastly she was super tired when the girls were all out eating in the grass and slept most of the time and I gave them some scrambled eggs that day for the first time. She was eating the eggs and I had seen her poop the day before so I wasnt super worried until when I went to put them all back in for the night and saw her butt was nasty and she had some diarrhea and regular poo on there. I tried cleaning it off and ended up having to wash her butt with warm water and got her cleaned up, but she was extremely lathargic and didn't really resist all the turning around and bath like she should of. By the end of the bath I knew she wasn't going to make it and so I set her up in a separate cage next to the girls (since I figured the others had already been exposed), gave her some food and water (which she was uninterested in), and had to go since I hurt my back very badly that same day and had school. I had my dad checking on her periodically and she died the next day and hadn't really moved from where I sat her after her bath.
The only thing I can think of that she could have is maybe cocci? The birds haven't been on medicated feed, and I stupidly had them on Purina from day one until the recall 2 weeks ago and then I switched them over to an organic feed. I have had them on sav-a-chick electrolytes and probiotics off and on since I got them at 9 days old.
Feel free to ask me questions if you need more information. I just really don't want my other 3 babies to get sick.
Sorry for the long post, and thank you for responding.
The chick's symptoms were lethargy and fluffing up to sleep at weird times of day when the other birds were awake, and then she lost weight quick over a few days, lastly she was super tired when the girls were all out eating in the grass and slept most of the time and I gave them some scrambled eggs that day for the first time. She was eating the eggs and I had seen her poop the day before so I wasnt super worried until when I went to put them all back in for the night and saw her butt was nasty and she had some diarrhea and regular poo on there. I tried cleaning it off and ended up having to wash her butt with warm water and got her cleaned up, but she was extremely lathargic and didn't really resist all the turning around and bath like she should of. By the end of the bath I knew she wasn't going to make it and so I set her up in a separate cage next to the girls (since I figured the others had already been exposed), gave her some food and water (which she was uninterested in), and had to go since I hurt my back very badly that same day and had school. I had my dad checking on her periodically and she died the next day and hadn't really moved from where I sat her after her bath.
The only thing I can think of that she could have is maybe cocci? The birds haven't been on medicated feed, and I stupidly had them on Purina from day one until the recall 2 weeks ago and then I switched them over to an organic feed. I have had them on sav-a-chick electrolytes and probiotics off and on since I got them at 9 days old.
Feel free to ask me questions if you need more information. I just really don't want my other 3 babies to get sick.
Sorry for the long post, and thank you for responding.