Quote:
Have you or anyone else answering this post read the material on this web site?
1. Chickens do not get colds
2. When a chicken exhibits symptoms such as these he has more than a cold
3. Never, Never treat with tetracycline, it does not cure, it may only mask the symptoms.
4. The bird will always be a "Typhoid Mary". It will always be a carrier of the desease.
Sorry for your bird, but these are the facts and the whole truth. Anyone getting a bird from you will now share in your luck. Read this site, it is here for a reason.
I thought I'd quickly respond to this as I had to go back and see what the discussion was about after reading Steve's comment that this is the reason he doesn't show.
Let me first just say that I would be cautious about jumping to the conclusion that the runny nose was a result of being at a show. This reminds me of something I read on BYC about a year ago. If I remember right somebody had fed their birds a banana and a rooster fell over stone dead immediately after taking a bite of the banana and the person concluded there was a link to the eating of a banana and the immediate death of the bird. There was none and somebody pointed out very well why that could not be the case.
Oftentimes a bird will have a disease for a couple of weeks before it will start to show any symptoms. I've been showing birds for years and can honestly say that I don't think I've ever contracted anything from a show. And anyone who's had chickens for any time at all knows that they're just as susceptible to diseases at the home farm as they are at a show. In fact, I would have to say that the folks I know who go to the shows are very concerned about their birds and would never do anything to pass on something to another's birds. Not only would the embarrassment of having something like that happen be enough to keep folks from risking it but all the folks in charge of the show and the judges would immediately have a bird removed from the premises if something were to be seen.
As for reading "the material on this web site", let me say that there is a lot of good stuff on here but there is just as much opinion and old wives tales and one can NOT take everything on here as literal. The fact is that chickens DO get colds. However, it's just not everything is called a "cold" anymore but has been broken down into more specifics. Here's an excerpt from Page 49 of Gail Damerow's "The Chicken Health Handbook":
"Respiratory disease has always been a problem in poultry. At one time, all respiratory diseases were lumped together as "colds" or "roup". During the middle part of the 20th century, they were recognized as a group of separate, sometimes unrelated, infections with common characteristics similar to a human cold: labored breathing, coughing, sneezing, sniffling, gasping, runny eyes and nose."
I'll let you get the book and read the rest for yourselves but as you will see if you read on it's not that a chicken has "more than a cold".
As for "3. Never, Never treat with tetracycline, it does not cure, it may only mask the symptoms." I would like to see the authority for this conclusion. Tetracycline is an antibiotic and it comes in many forms. Any of the drugs ending in "cycline" is most likely Tetracycline. Even Terramycin is a trade name for Tetracycline. Antibiotics do work. The "masking" referred to may be a reference to the fact that often when antibiotics are not used properly (and in some cases even when they are) there is a build up of resistance to the drug and therefore the particular strains become more resistant to the drugs. This is a current fear with one of the new antibiotics on the market today. I forget the name but while it is VERY effective today, the fear is that overuse and misuse will result in a strain of disease that is resistant to the drug.
As for the "Typhoid Mary" reference, that is already the case in more birds than people imagine. And with many, many things. That is why the best defense against disease is to breed a flock of birds that build up their own disease resistant immunity.
God Bless,
