8 week old peachick lethargic, droopy wings, dehydrated

[Chicken Keith]

Took the remaining living bird into the vet today. He did a rectal probe, found no roundworm eggs. Vet is an avian doc, translation: he knows parrots and that's mostly it. He examined the keel breast bone and admitted the bird looked beyond hope. It won't stand now. The vet prescribed cefadroxil, and did an IV this morning, but I had to ask for that. I also bought some medicated chick feed with amproxidl (sp?) to combat the possible cocci. I don't have any meds to combat cocci without ordering thru amazon and it will get here too late, I fear. I should be prepared to shell out some bucks for pea vet bills if I'm going to raise peas. Sigh. I just wish I could see improvement, anything. The last chick that died, I had to struggle to get food down her, and her struggle seemed to expend energy that she didn't have and should've stored. She died not long after our last wrestling match and regurgitated the scrambled egg she swallowed. Man this sucks.

 

[KsKingBee]

Feeding heavy foods when critically ill is a bit counterproductive, the organs are shutting down and they have trouble digesting. If you have to deal with this again use something that is very liquid and use a tube feeding method to feed. It is quick and easy and causes very little stress. Ask any vet for a script or have them order some sulfadimethoxine, for cocci, go to the pet store and get some Fish-Zole for combating blackhead, and TSC for some Sageguard for deworming. While at the pet store get the Kaytee Baby Bird Food and look around for some tube feeding equipment. There are a couple of good threads here on BYC about tube feeding with more information on how to and what to buy.

 

[Midnightman14]

I agree, throw out the wazine and get some valbazen. Even though it might not help now it's something you'll definitely need in the future. I keep it, Sulfa antibiotics, and corid on hand at all times for my birds.

 

[Chicken Keith]

Of the dewormers you use, which ones can you feed (injected down the gullet with syringe) undiluted? I read on here that diluting SafeGuard fenbendozole in water is futile. What's the opinion on that?

The other chick died last nite. I'm deworming my remaining 2 adult birds with SafeGuard in water. I'm ordering some valbazen to use in it's place, based on your advice. I'm not the savvy pea farmer as the rest of all you, I'm still learning. And they are painful lessons to learn. You all might've been where I am now.

 

[Frenchman Creek]

Keith you need to keep in mind that fences do not keep out diseases as long as us humans freely move from one pen to another carrying all the little critters with us. I will add my voice to the choir and say I also doubt worms killed your peachicks. Like the others I would suspect cocci first and black head second since you mentioned yellow poop in your OP. Medicated feed is a preventive only and as KKB mentioned you should be getting a prescription from your vet for dimethox and ordering some fishzole. We have all lost chicks so we all know how you feel. Best of luck with your future chicks. FC.

 

[KsKingBee]

Yes putting Safeguard in the water is pretty much a waste of meds. It is very safe to give down the gullet, One ml per young bird, two ml per hen and three ml per adult cock. Very young chicks can have half or less ml. Valbazen can also go down the throat at a slightly less amount but it has the advantage that it can also be diluted in water and still be somewhat effective. Remember that you can also give the full doses mixed into their food or wet mash.

 

[williamsingr1]

More then likely you are experiencing what I went through, a series of possible coccidiosis that turned in black head possibly. Shared water buckets can be the culprits as well as soil ground pens or they just get into and eat earth worms after the rains. The earth worms are the culprits. Using Amprolium for 7 days followed up by electrolytes for 7 will work most of the time on Coccidiosis possibly, but may not work always or only temporarily as it hard to kill. Since your already down one chick with more sick it could be now mutated into blackhead which is another even deadlier killer and almost impossible to cure with our over the counter crap on the market ,which describes also the yellow stool which probably has blood in it also you just dont see it. Go to Pets Supply Plus tomorrow and start treatment immediatley , buy found in the fish section what is called the, GENRAL CURE by API, 10 powder packets per box, blue and yellow box, it has two ingredients in it, 250mg metronidazole and 75mg P...something ( cant find my glasses to read spelling ) , using a syringe mix 1 packet per bird with small amount of water 10 or 15 cc or about the equivalent of 1 TaBeLspoon of water and give down the throat for 10 days as 7 isnt ( BEING CAREFUL NOT TO ASPIRATE INTO THEIR LUNGS BY GIVING IT TO QUICKLY ) enough usually with bad infections and keep an eye on their poop if it is still runny then continue another 7 - 10 days. They are going to hate it and cough weird noises and spray snot but it works. Make sure you catch them in a blanket on their perch so they cant get away when giving the meds. Treat all birds the birds are in contact with. Get your birds off the ground as the soil in infected with the deadly protozoa and can live in the soil for 3 yrs. Put all feed in containers and do not feed on ground. You need to clean out the pen and treat the ground with bleach and lye to kill off the protozoan and do not put the birds back on the ground or in the coup until sterile or they will become re- infected. In some case if this persists then you need the cousin of the formula banned in the U.S.A. called Dimetronidazole. It was used in turkey farming but causes cancer if you eat the turkeys so it was banned but WILL cure blackhead but also may give your peafowl cancer, but when faced with possible death its a choice some will take. I did and bought the dimetronidazole however the Genral Cure worked and I didnt have to use the other I ordered from China and took 5 weeks to get and had to buy 2Kg and have on hand if you want to some if the other doesnt work, but it should, it worked for me, and I also lost my first bird like you, she died in my hands. but all my other birds have since recovered.

 

[williamsingr1]

Safeguard works are a preventative along with other wormers you should give them spring ,fall , but once they are sick it will not help with coccidiousis. Best way to use Safeguard is to spread over and mix in with sunflower seeds as you can not over dose using this but again will not work on all worms and various de wormers and preventative measures should be taken as peafowl are highly susceptible to a lot of crap and very hard to cure once they get ill and in most cases as you have seen they will die unfortunately.

 

[Chicken Keith]

Thank you all for your inputs. Unfortunately, both birds are now gone. I try to maintain an even strain, but I can't lie. This hurts. This hurts my heart and it hurts my pride. Pride that I had gotten these chicks to a stage I thought they weren't as vulnerable any more. I read somewhere that once you hit the 8 week mark your out of the woods. Wrong. I must confess to you, I have an IB cock and hen, both have never really been wormed, and they are 4 years old. I "wormed" them with safeguard in water in the past. I doused the chicks' separate pen with D.E. sort of cursing the disease as I was doing it. If anyone had been watching they'd have thought I was conducting some sort of voodoo exorcism. It angers me so this disease took hold and killed them in 4 DAYS!!!!!! gone nada, nothing for it. Roosts that sit empty.

Here's some bizarre things I noticed while the chicks were sick. The poop really attracted the flies, and there was an odor, not terribly unpleasant but noticeable. It smelled like sour feed. At first I thought it was the feed (game bird chick starter 26% protein), which I stopped using immediately; of course the chicks weren't eating any of it by this time into their sickness. You know that on day 2 of the sickness they were still strong enough to fly up on their perch? By the 3rd day they could still perch on lower ones, but by the 4th they just crouched down and sort of gave up. I tried not to think of these chicks as pets, but to no avail, I fell in love with them. They had no fear of me like their parents, they came up to me to peck at my fingers as if I had a treat in them.
Thank you for your sympathy. I'm trying to be tough about it, not sure why. Maybe it's the man in me and the culture. I mean, lose a dog, you cry, lose a cat, you cry. I never cry when I lose my chickens, I mean I get sad, and somber but never cry. But you invest so much emotion into hoping your IB breeder pair resulted in fertile eggs, then your hen lays eggs only to have a skunk sneak into the pen at night and munch down on those that you didn't pick up off the ground. THEN, you incubate the buggers for 28 days, THEN you help them out of their pipped shell after 48 hours cuz they weren't doing it on their own. These were probably red flags I didn't have the healthiest birds. Crap sorry to ramble. I guess I wrote what I did more for me than for you to read, sorry about that. There are a lot of takeaways thanks to the advice you gave. Not much in the mood to do this again. I'd like to get a couple more IB hens sexually mature just to increase my lot of hatching eggs, maybe. But that dirty bloody $#%^ disease. It was the bully on the beach that stomped my sand castle.

 

[williamsingr1]

Safeguard does not mix in water and you have to continually stir it in the water and then its iffy if they get enough of it drinking it. Your better off putting it on foods they will eat. Scrambled eggs or Sunflower seeds or what have you. Or give it orally. Poop is poop and it all smells nasty for that matter but it does help in identifying problems with our animals as well as watching their physical conditions ..... Multiple de-wormers are recommended every year and at different times of the year but be sure to read up on all meds before giving them anything as some require time gaps between giving them another drug. Sorry about your loss, I did not particularly take it all too well when I lost my first bird either after raising her for 2yrs with the others and she was my favorite out of all of them even over my male. I have 2 mature 2yr old IB females I am looking to relocate and each carry the recessive IB BS gene. Although your a bit far away Im about as far north as you can get in the top of Michigan by Sault Saint Marie.