Chicken Sick, Bronchitis?

[hmlamberson]

Hi I'm new to posting on BYC and find all the current posts very helpful but I want to get a bit more specific to what is happening to my flock. I have 17 chickens, 1 of which is a rooster. All my chickens are different and lay all different colored eggs, I love them! 2 weeks ago I noticed my rooster got a bit "hoarse" when he would crow. Now he hardly crows at all. He sounds like he has a chest cold and sounds snotty (doesn't really look snotty though) He does try to crow in the morning. It's also almost like he coughs and it sounds snotty. 2 of my hens that are golden comets are in the same boat with rattled breathing. Yesterday when I picked up the golden comet it kind of smelled by it's face. They all look fine, eat and drink fine. They do everything they normally would just sounds like they have chest colds like bronchitis? I just wormed the whole flock with Safeguard on Tuesday 5/16/17 but don't see any improvement. I also noticed they were itchy and found mites/lice on them so I did a huge coop clean out and sprayed it all down and dusted with powder. I treated all my chickens with a poultry spray and even washed 3 of them and now they all look better mite/lice wise. What the heck is going on? I've never had this before and I've been a chicken owner for years now!! Please, any help would be greatly appreciated! I have 2 dogs (that are on flea/tick preventative and heartgard) but I don't want them to get any of this either!!

 

[Eggcessive]

Most chicken diseases and parasites are specific to chickens, so your dogs should not be affected. It sounds like they have picked up a respiratory disease such as mycoplasma or coryza, from a newer flock member or from wild birds. They can also be spread on our shoes or clothes, or from neighboring flocks. You can contact your local agriculture extension agent for testing, or send one or two sacrificed chickens in to the state vet for necropsies to ID the disease. A bad odor can be a sign of coryza. Tylan 50 injectable can be used orally or as an injection, twice a day, 1/2 ml for every 2.5 pounds of weight, for 5 days. That can treat bacterial respiratory diseases. Make sure the coop does not have wet or moldy areas, keep the temperatures cool, and provide good overhead air circulation with screened windows and fans.

 

[hmlamberson]

Wow, thanks so much for your quick reply. I keep my coop clean so I cannot understand. I did recently put construction sand in their run because it got really muddy/mucky and was starting to smell bad. It's been really nice now with the sand but now I had this happen. It's very hard for me to treat the birds 2x a day with the Tylan 50 as I have to be to work at 7am and to treat 17 birds by myself in the morning before work would be near impossible for me, afternoon and evening would be no issue. Is it possible to treat 1x a day? I'm guessing whatever they have, they will always have?