Chicken Diarrhea, and what to do

[casportpony]

Capillary worms also need several days of treatment, so I would do like the vet said and get as many worms as possible by treating for several days.

-Kathy

 

[casportpony]

Or maybe call the vet and ask for a treatment plan.

-Kathy

Edited to add article on worming:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6750887

 

[Eggcessive]

I would call the vet and ask what worms he was treating for. Did you take in a sample, or was he just treating for everything possible? If my chickens just have the regular worms, I would not spend the time 3 days in a row, dosing 28 birds. I would try however if they have gapeworm or tapeworm, but I doubt that your chickens do. We don't have that info, so I wouldn't spend the time and money doing it, unless there is good reason. Here is a good article (ignore the treatment drugs because they are outdated and don't always work except panacur): http://poultrykeeper.com/general-chickens/worming-chickens

 

[Paully3]

I took her in because she had a runny beak and a little rattle. I am new to chickens and my wife made me to see if we could find out what was going on. While I was there, they did a fecal on her and found a whipworm. We treated our whole flock for three days, but was never told to reapply. Having read thousands of posts and countless hours on this site, I wonder if I was given correct information. I do not live in a farming community and the vet was not my normal vet. He was the only one locally that said they saw chickens when I called around. But to be honest, I'm not sure of his knowledge of chickens. I told him I used sand and PDZ on my poopboard and he was stunned and had never heard of it before. And a couple other "common knowledge" things that I would think a vet would have at least heard of...

 

[Eggcessive]

I wasn't aware that chickens got whipworm, but I'm not a worm expert. Whipworm is a big deal in dogs and cats, but I was under the belief that those worms don't cross the species. I would call my local vet and discuss it, but right now you have a lot to deal with. My stepdaughter is a large and small animal vet, and she says that the only thing she remembers being taught about chickens was bumblefoot. I think the use of Sweet PDZ and sand for litter in chickens is strictly a BYC thing, LOL, though it really works well in smaller coops.

 

[Paully3]

I'm not sure that 28 birds qualifies as a small coop! Lol. But the sand and PDZ works great for me. I started out with pine shavings on the poop board and straw on the floor and could never quite get it cleaned without changing it all together. And the smell...and flies!! Now, the smell is 100% better and a quick clean out with a cat litter scoop every day and its a wrap! Only a couple flies here and there now. A couple minutes with a flyswatter and that's all set too. I seem to trust the advice from a select few on this site more than the vet that I saw, so...I'm not quite sure if there is another vet around here. Might have to drive north a ways...

 

[Eggcessive]

I actually use Sweet PDZ on a poop board that goes 45 feet long around my coop for about 55 birds, and have used this for a year.. It stays pretty clean for me, too, but my clean up job is about 30 minutes a day. That leaves them the whole floor underneath the boards and out in the middle of the coop to roam around, but they free range all day long. I have recently been thinking of going back to ladder roosts to make it easier on someone taking care of my chickens if I would ever go out of town.

 

[Paully3]

That looks more like a barn to me! I wish I had a coop that big...I am seriously addicted to chickens. However I am a little discouraged lately. But I am learning some valuable lessons. Unfortunately, I am learning the hard way. Guess I should have read a little more before I took the plunge into chicken keeping. I'll never buy adult birds again. Only day old chicks or hatching eggs...I don't want to inherit other peoples chicken issues anymore. I've only been doing this for three months now and have spent a great deal of time reading and trying to figure out what's wrong with my chickens. I culled two yesterday for respiratory infections. I'm praying that it doesn't spread through my whole flock. I don't want to have to have a closed flock...if only I had it to do a over again...I wanted eggs so bad...bit at what cost.

 

[Paully3]

This is my coop...

Its only three months old and I need to build an addition already. My wife told me I should have made it bigger. I never thought I would have so many birds...and still want more! I need to figure out what's going on with these chickens...I can't, in good conscience, add more birds when I have illness in my flock.

 

[Eggcessive]

That looks more like a barn to me! I wish I had a coop that big...I am seriously addicted to chickens. However I am a little discouraged lately. But I am learning some valuable lessons. Unfortunately, I am learning the hard way. Guess I should have read a little more before I took the plunge into chicken keeping. I'll never buy adult birds again. Only day old chicks or hatching eggs...I don't want to inherit other peoples chicken issues anymore. I've only been doing this for three months now and have spent a great deal of time reading and trying to figure out what's wrong with my chickens. I culled two yesterday for respiratory infections. I'm praying that it doesn't spread through my whole flock. I don't want to have to have a closed flock...if only I had it to do a over again...I wanted eggs so bad...bit at what cost.

Yes, an old converted barn. Dirt floor, the picture is in winter with the cracks between the boards covered with feed bags, and my chickens had to make a few deposits. Your coop looks so clean, none of the brown drips that mine has, LOL. Chickens are addictive. Some people that sell chickens don't know enough about them to know they are sick. One thing good to know about respiratory diseases is that if you start over after any sick birds, most of the bad diseases don't live more than a few days, and 2 weeks after heavy cleaning you can start over. With hatching eggs it is possible to get mycoplasma (MG or CRD.) NPIP breeders are usually good.