Thank you. I've looked up 'bout every respiratory disease I can think of... None of them match... It's bugging me. I don't like the sound of it.When I discovered we had gapeworm it was after a very brutal, hot summer... I didn't have classic 'gapeworm signs' so it wasn't even on my radar... started with a couple birds within one week, laid their egg and walked out of the coop and just fell over dead... suspected heat stroke so I added electolytes/vitamin supplements to their water through the heat... this seemed to fix things... then I lost a couple ducks, but with them it looked like they were coughing then choking on something and couldn't get air... then it cooled off... the ducks had been more sedentary throughout the heat which I could understand, but they continued once it cooled down... this was concerning... then within the same day, Peg (my special needs duck) almost choked to death in my arms, the only relief she got was floating in water while being supervised... and I found a bantam hen with her head purple and dragging it on the ground... isolated her and just as an afterthought, decided to deworm her... gave her 1 dose and 1 dose to Peg...
View attachment 1054670 View attachment 1054671
This is the hen when I brought her in for 1st dose...
View attachment 1054672
This is her 24hrs later, before 2nd dose... HUGE improvement... but the ducks are what show my first signs of needing to deworm... sitting around, quieter, less active, less bathing/preening are warning signs... if any ducks start 'coughing', immediate dosing happens... I think this is due to earthworms, snails and slugs being the intermediate host for gapeworms and my ducks eat more of those than my chickens do... either way, to me with chickens they go purple and hang around listlessly and the ducks cough... no rattle/wet hreathing sounds... that sounds more respiratory, could be fungal?
I treated for MG (since I already had meds) to see if it did anything, but nope. Still the same.
Last edited:
