Thank you for your reply! Avian vet in my area currently are not taking new patients but I will be stopping by the store later to pick up the Vitamin E, Selenium and Vitamin B Complex.
Right now she's only on the poly-visol every second day, one quarter of the 1ml syringe with some water for hydration. It was every day for about two weeks when the condition first appeared then she was put on nutri-dench. Unfortunately it gave her terrible diarrhea and made her completely lethargic and crash, though it could've been dehydration because every poop was quite runny. Took her off of it and put her back on polyvisol after about 5 days. That was about 3 weeks ago. She's been slowly improving in that time, getting bigger and more active though still can't walk. She's constantly pushing with her legs trying to get up and shes now awake the majority of the day whereas before she slept through it other than when I woke her to feed her.
I'm not sure how much she weighs, I don't have a small scale but she's about half the size of the other brahma broodmates and still quite skinny but has been putting on the weight slowly. She's on chick feed still, with the occassional egg or fruit or veggie I can get her to try, shes very food motivated.
She has been kept in my bedroom until now though hopefully once she is finally able to hold herself up and move a bit we will probably put her in one of our wired brooding pens to start re-introducing her to the flock.
That's good that she's alert and trying to be active; that's VERY positive news versus the sleeping. Ours slept through the first week of treatment, but I think she needed the rest. Nutri-Drench is pretty rich. I mix that into a dosage that I'm going to share a few paragraphs down. Maybe she got a little too much for her system, causing the diarrhea. In any case, I think the Poly-Vi-Sol dosing you're giving her is not enough to see marked improvement.
Try not to concern yourself with re-introduction to the flock any time soon. Let's try to get her well first. I'd like to see you keep her where she's out of commotion, can relax, can get a little monitoring by you, AND where she can't hurt herself - we used a spare bedroom, and we kept our girl in a cat bed with low sides on it, lots of rag-worthy old bath towels to sleep/poo on, and an old blanket as a skirt around the outside of the bed in case she was to try to back her way out of the bed, which she tried to do on many occasions early on. We didn't want her to hit anything and make things worse!
Dang-it! I forgot to mention Yogurt, the kind that you and I might eat. That helps with feeding, though you said she's eager to eat - that's GREAT! Yogurt seems to taste good to our birds and it helps provide good bacteria in their digestive tract.
I'm going to give you the mix and dosages that worked for us with the items you've collected:
1st Dose of the day - about 9AM:
1/2 TBSP of Starter Feed
1/4 TBSP of Yogurt
1/4 tablet of B-Complex (crushed and pulverized to powder)
25mcg Selenium (1 200mcg tablet cut to eighths (crush this to a fine powder too)
1 gelcap of 400IU Vit-E
3-4 drops of Nutri-Drench, Poly-Vi-Sol,
or Liquid Vit-B (choose one)
For this step, we use the mortar of a mortar and pestle set because it allows us to crush the pills first, then add the feed, etc and mix everything in one small bowl, but any small bowl will do.
Put the Feed and crushed pills in the bowl and dry mix them.
Next, add the Yogurt, Vit-E gel squeezed over the top, and put the 3-4 drops of vitamins on top of that.
Mix, mix, and mix a little more with a small spoon or other utensil.
In a minute or so, you should have a moist paste. If it's "runny moist", add just a little more Starter Feed and mix again; if it's too dry, add a bit more Yogurt and mix again.
When you're done, you should have a paste that just sticks to your fingers, will stay together on its own, and the chicken can easily manage.
Now, feed it to the chicken. We break the mix up with a chop-stick in the same bowl we mixed in, then pull out about pea-sized to small marble-sized pieces to feed to the chicken. If she's eager to eat, she may just eat it right out of the bowl for you. Make sure she eats all of the mix to get the full dose in her. If you have to hand-feed her, do so, but I sense that she's going to eat this with no hesitation.
2nd Dose of the day - about 4 or 5PM:
1/2 TBSP of Starter Feed
1/4 TBSP of Yogurt
25mcg Selenium (1 200mcg tablet cut to eighths (crush this to a fine powder too)
1 gelcap of 400IU Vit-E
3-4 drops of Nutri-Drench, Poly-Vi-Sol,
or Liquid Vit-B (choose one)
Do the same thing you did in the morning, but minus the B-Complex
Stay with that schedule for 5 days to a week. If after a week, you're not seeing improvement, you can go to a 3 Dose per day schedule removing the B-Complex for doses 2 and 3, removing the Selenium for dose 3, and adjusting the times to 8am, 2pm, and 8pm and all else staying the same.
Finally, after she's eaten, give her a little water. We give water mixed with Vitamins and Electrolytes, but is not necessary. It's really an easy regimen after you do it for a day or two.
We did this treatment almost exactly with a 12 week old Silkie just recently and she responded beautifully. The only thing we changed was removing the B-Complex tablet in favor of Liquid Vit-B and using Durvet's Vit-E with Selenium for goats versus separate Vit-E gelcaps and tablet Selenium. We made the change because our girl hit a plateau in improvement at the end of the 2nd week of treatment. You may find that happens here too.
Hope this helps!
