Chick with raspy, labored breathing; not sure if I have a problem...

[Chieftain]

I'm still seeking solutions for this chick, and I headed up to the feed store this morning to see what they suggested. I talked to the gal who is in charge of their chicks, and she is very, bery good, and she recommended I try an antibiotic.

I came home with a 6.4 Oz. bag or Duramycin-10 (Tetracycline Hydrochloride Soluble Powder). The directions for diluting it are for large batches, and I am looking for confirmation about that...

The recommended dosage is 10 mg/pound of body weight. The chick we are discussing weighs about 1/2 pound.

100 gallons of water with one packet, makes 100 gallons @ 100 mg of tetracycline. If we divide everything by ten, including the weight of the powder, we get this:

.64 ounces of powder in 10 gallons of water should equal the same 100 mg of tetracycline, correct? If not, what is?

That's still a lot, so dividing by ten again, yields:

.07 ounces of powder in one gallon of water should yield 100 mg of tetracycline.

The chick is eating a little and drinking water. She is lethargic and lays under the light sleeping. Her poo is a bright green color with plenty of white urine salts on it. She still has no discharges, no swellings and not sign of mites or lice. Her breathing is not raspy like it was the other day.

I'll wait a bit to see if I get a reply here, and if not I guess I will wing it with the above dilution figures and hope for the best.

 

[Chieftain]

Disregard, the chick has died. I did figure out a dosage by using grams, and it worked out to about 1 gram per half gallon of water, but she never took a sip of it.

No real cause here that I can readinly identify, other than this chick was undersize from the start, and a late hatch at that. She started strong but is 1/3 the size of her peers that came from the same clutch. I checked her body over and there is nothing obviously wrong, and a post-mortem is not in the cards.

Nothing to do but move on. Sometimes you just get an inherently ill and/or weak chick, and Storey's Guide says that often by the time you notice symptoms, it's too late anyway. I buried her out in the garden where she can do the most good.

I cleaned the coop again today anyway, now that they are eating in the run full time I have removed the food (and left the water) inside to coop. With a dead chick, it's a good excuse to shovel out all the old litter and put in some new just in case there was something floating around.

Moving on.

 

[KristyAnn]

;( so sorry for your loss.