I have some silkie chicks that are about one month old. It was our first brood. One of them started kind of gasping about a week after she was born. We were using pine bedding and at first I thought she had swallowed some or something. It seemed like it became not so bad. Well, 3 weeks later she's still gasping, and she is HALF the size of the rest of her siblings.Pot Pie eats, she is the first to do everything and is very smart, but she is apparantally spending all her energy breathing. We took her to the vet last week and they gave her 3 different antibiotics. Vet says no obstruction, and we don't think it's infectious as she's the only one. Metronidazole (100 mg/ml) .04 cc once daily fluconazole (25 mg/ML) .04 twice daily SMZ-TMP (48 mg/ml) .06 twice daily After a week on antibiotics no change. Of course the vet once us to come back and spend $100 on more testing (we just spent over $100 on the visit, basic test and antibiotics!). Any help or ideas? I read through the sticky but having a hard time pinpointing it and I don't want to give her any other medicine on top of this and kill her or anything. Worms perhaps? How would you tell?
Hmmmm...could be something internal....lungs may not be fully developed or such. She's still alive and kicking, so that's a good sign! I had a silkie chick do this...he grew out of it and is still a little runt! He's half the size of his siblings, but gets along just fine. He would gasp after just walking across the room. I thought for sure he wouldn't make it, but he's a fighter! Keep us posted!!!
Your vet probably suspects something fungal such as asgergillosis >also called "brooder pnuemonia" http://www.ivis.org/advances/Kearns/kearns2/ivis.pdf which is very difficult to treat (Metronidazol is usually used to treat trichomoniasis or giardia in caged birds > http://www.merckvetmanual.com/mvm/index.jsp?cfile=htm/bc/201400.htm This is a long road to treat this so be patient. I do hope you were warned to clean your brooder extensively (let sit in full sunlight after for a couple hours also)
No she didn't say anything about cleaning it! Ugh. This is a really sweet chick, I mean it will come to me and chase me down the driveway, but she fits in the palm of my hand!