A terrible tragedy..any advice?

[dredre66]

I know I haven't posted in a while, Ive been busy raising our new flock of baby chicks. Sadly yesterday their broody mom died suddenly, I found her in the coop just laying there. We talked to our local farm and feed store owner and he said it sounded like a parasite. So that left us 7 baby chicks approx. 4 weeks old, We had considered bringing them inside for the evening but weve been having a huge heat wave so we left them locked in the coop with our 1 year old polish and 3 6 month old australopes. This morning my boyfriend went to check on them as we do every morning and he found all 7 babies deceased.

I am so upset I had to call into work this morning and I have no idea what caused this, they seemed perfectly healthy yesterday, just a lil sad after loosing mom.

Ive read on here about cocci and things and my boyfriend thought maybe the bigger hens pecked them to death but to peck all 7 seems a little odd.

I didn't look at the deceased chicks so I am just going based off what he told me.

Any advice or ideas, Im worried my older flock my succumb to whatever got the babies and need advice to avoid losing anymore chickens.

PLEASE HELP

 

[RonC]

I really don't know for sure but sounds like it may be cocci. Without having them tested I would put all the survivors on corid for the specified period just to be safe. The others may have killed the chicks since mom wasn't there to protect them.

 

[dredre66]

I have sulmet that I just added to the remaining chickens water. will this help if its cocci?

thank you for the quick response and advice

 

[RonC]

I have never heard of Sulmet but looked it up and it is a treatment for Cocci. It also says not to eat the eggs. Give probably 2 weeks after treatment stops before comsuming te eggs.