Chicken with Partially Obstructed Airway

[JWils23]

Hey folks. Naturally one of our chickens started showing respiratory distress yesterday afternoon late, and today I had to go to work and couldn't get her in to a vet before they all closed for the weekend. Any idea what we're dealing with here? I initially thought gapeworm until I got a look in her throat and saw that it was the wrong color. Looks almost like a lesion or growth of some sort. Any help is appreciated. We're worried we might lose her before a vet opens back up on Monday, but we don't want to pay to see an emergency vet if we can help it.

 

[JWils23]

Edit: Figured out it's most likely avian canker (aka avian trichomonosis). Leaving this up in case anyone else is searching for something similar.

 

[Eggcessive]

It does look like canker, a protozoan disease. Wet fowl pox can look like that as well. Have you had any brown scabs or signs of dry fowl pox in your flock recently? Canker smells very rotten, but wet fowl pox does not. Have you noticed an odor?
Can you get a larger picture of the whole face and head?

Canker affects the inside of the beak, the throat, and can spread down into the crop making it hard to eat and swallow. It is a contagious disease that is spread by pigeons and may affect your other birds. The lesions can be large anought ot block the airway. The drugs metronidazole—also known as FishZole or Flagyl is used for treatment. Dosage is 250 mg given orally once a day for 5-7 days. Ronidazole is another drug used as well.

If it is wet fowl pox, that is a virus that will have to runs it’s course. Make sure that she gets enough to eat and drink. There is no treatment for wet pox, but lesions can sometimes become large and they might need to be removed.

 

[JWils23]

Thank you! It didn't look like the pictures I was seeing for wet pox, even though that was my first suspect (our rooster had it recently, so it was top of my list). What I've looked up so far for cankers seems to fit the bill precisely.

 

[Eggcessive]

But is there a bad odor? Canker is said to smell very bad. If not, wet pox could be the culprit, and it has no treatment. If you have never seen canker before, but have had fowl pox, I would lean toward that. http://www.poultrydvm.com/condition/fowl-pox

 

[JWils23]

There is what I would classify as a bad odor when she exhales, which also made me lean toward canker. It's hard to tell for sure, but mostly we just want to give her the best supportive care we can until Monday when the vets' offices open back up and we can get a proper diagnosis.

 

[Eggcessive]

Can you give her water and some wet chicken feed in a small cup or scoop held up to the beak? Electrolytes with vitamins or Poultry NutriDrench would be good to give as a boost. Let us know what the vet thinks.

 

[JWils23]

Alas, despite our best efforts, she died earlier this afternoon. She was eating and drinking relatively well until this morning, and then breathing became too hard, and we couldn't clear the obstruction away (we tried).

 

[Eggcessive]

Oh, I am very sorry for your loss.

 

[JWils23]

Thank you. It happens, and it was just bad timing in terms of when her symptoms showed up. Had she showed something even one day earlier, we might have been able to catch it before all the vets' offices were closed for the weekend.