Coccidiosis outbreak?

I use garlic internally and lime externally. With raw garlic in the diet regularly they never get cocci, I've never had a case of it never mind lost a single bird to it, and if you use lime on the ground wherever they live, it kills pathogens, parasite eggs, etc. This is the same lime you can feed to them, not the stuff that burns them, that is.

As for immunity, genetics play a large part, being raised by the hen in the dirt from hatching onwards also contributes a lot to resistance, and not overprotecting them with chemicals or artificial treatments appears to also be important. At least, I've never done that and have had no issues with cocci, whereas those I know who do artificially protect them still lose birds to cocci fairly regularly.

Best wishes.

 

I hope you don't lose any more. Sounds terrible to live in fear of cocci outbreaks, and it's so easy to avoid too.

I know garlic etc sounds like 'woo woo' to some people (lol) but you can't argue with results. Too many people keep suffering losses on Corid etc, not worth it to rely on something that has a failure rate in my opinion, when you can use something more efficient instead.

Best wishes.

 

Chickens develop resistance as they mature to the strains of cocci that are in their environment. I have never had a recurrence of coccidiosis once birds have been treated and recovered. If you regularly bring in new birds there is the potential there to also bring in new strains of cocci that the other birds are not resistant too.

It would probably be worthwhile to have a fecal sample tested and see if cocci numbers really are running very high or if there's something else going on. Are these birds on a regular deworming program?

I would do a lot of research before using garlic long term as it could possibly be a potential problem. Garlic, onions and others in the same family contain disulfides which are known to cause hemolytic anemia in other animals. Especially when given long term, it is cumulative, it builds up in their bodies over time. I have not seen formal studies on birds re this so it's not something I would want to do without seeing a lot more info. on that topic.

 

I actually would not be deworming them so often. What are you using for a dewormer?

 

I've done lots of research on using garlic, not that I would ever suggest anyone substitute that for their own...

But good luck avoiding disulfides, since they're part of a normal healthy diet and a vital part of your normal physiology, and the same is true for animals. They're part of your environment, and without them you'd die.

Understanding what you're trying to avoid, and why, and in what form, is vital before you just decide to ban something from the diet based on... What? Oversimplified and therefore incorrect information? Sweeping generalizations? Even authoritative textbooks and sources often contain those, so yes, I agree, please do a lot of research before just subscribing to an idea.

The people claiming garlic can cause Heinz Body Anemia have not been able to back it up in any studies I've seen, and it's been dismissed by those I've seen who were publishing it around the internet; the studies done were on horses, dogs, and cats, not poultry, and there was no hard evidence found, just a correlation in some individuals. The overwhelming majority will never even show that correlation.

To avoid garlic based on that suggestion is akin to deciding to quit eating all fruit and vegetables to avoid naturally occurring salt, since of course we all know salt can kill you. Did you know oxygen can kill you too? And water, too... You know what, almost every single nutrient can kill you in high enough dose, we need more research to know if we should keep eating!

These sort of jokes, while based on facts, help to illustrate the extremity of the overreaction people are exhibiting towards garlic's potential threat. Here we are, most of us using chemicals known to cause defects of DNA and general permanent damage in order to worm them etc, and we're turning up our noses at a chinese whisper of a threat of potential, maybe possible anemia caused by garlic in some rare individuals. :/ It doesn't make sense, it's disproportionate and illogical. We are more likely to trust toxic inorganic chemicals than we are to trust something natural.

If it were really so dangerous it wouldn't be used in the racehorse or performance horse industry in bulk amounts --- and they often don't feed it free choice like I do --- especially since supposedly horses are one of the most at-risk groups for Heinz Body Anemia. The research/studies done for racehorses etc is often top notch, pioneering stuff, which the fields of medicine, nutrition, etc for other animals and humans benefit from. Big money, big interest.

Since it's a vague possibility, (and steadily appearing more vague the more I look into it, lol), or even despite that, it's still worth noting, as it would suck to lose a pet due to feeding it something it's allergic to.

However it's far more likely to die from countless other causes than it is from garlic consumption. It'd be pretty ridiculous to play it so 'safe' regarding garlic that your flock dies from the numerous and common diseases and issues known to be able to be treated by natural sulfur, natural antibiotics, etc which garlic contains. Many fruits and vegetables contain naturally occurring disulfides, too.

Many chemicals, whether naturally occurring or inorganic, have multiple different forms, are converted to multiple different forms in the body, often changing nonstop throughout being processed by the body (and that does include being changed into disulfides, which are actually easily processed by the body and environment) and to label one whole family as 'dangerous' is dangerous in itself. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, ignorance kills and causes untold suffering.

In the thread I've linked to below, in one of my comments, there is a link to another thread and throughout that thread there are links to studies on garlic. Including the one the oft-quoted claim of Heinz Body Anemia being caused by garlic was based on... Interesting to note it's since been retracted and has lost support, though its echoes remain.

Quote: It is crucially important that you do not confuse artificial/inorganic chemicals etc with natural/organic ones, which is what must have occurred for you to think disulfides are all harmful. Organic disulfides are natural and form part of a normal diet and environment. Garlic contains natural ones, as do many other plants which we consume on a regular basis. Inorganic disulfides are harmful but needless to say don't naturally occur in garlic.

Just because one human may suffer an allergic reaction to something 99.999 percent of other humans do not react to does not mean we should make any attempts to eradicate this from our lives. The same is true of animals. Garlic has always been --- and still is --- a natural part of wild animals' diets. They self medicate with it, as well as with other plants also containing natural disulfides. Our ancestors have been using garlic for thousands upon thousands of years, specifically to treat chickens as well as other livestock and themselves. In the absence of garlic, animals will use other plants with high sulfur compound levels. Disulfides are part of that. Natural sulfur compounds are necessary for plant, animal and human life.

Some individuals suffer genetic diseases etc which makes them unable to process a normal diet or certain aspects of it. This doesn't mean that diet is unhealthy for all the rest, nor does it mean that all the rest will develop that individuals' genetic disease or problems from remaining on the normal diet that the individual in question cannot handle.

I've raised many hundreds of chooks on garlic, and I'm certainly not unique in that since it's been done throughout the centuries, yet problems due to that have yet to be observed and proven, despite research massively overdosing animals on isolated, inorganic compounds derived from garlic. It takes a lot of unnatural application to cause harm. It's such an incredibly unlikely occurrence that it's little more than scaremongering to use that as a reason to not use garlic, not that I am accusing you of scaremongering; I'm sure you're just repeating a potential hazard you heard, which is necessary, but it's that unlikely that it's gotten ridiculous how much time I end up spending educating people as to how unlikely it is. Your chicken is more likely to drown in its own waterbowl than die from consuming garlic, lol! It's more likely to have a heart attack. (Though that risk drops when garlic is being consumed.) It's more likely to die from hundreds of other things, perhaps thousands of them. Cocci is one of them, as well as numerous diseases garlic is useful in treating.

Quote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disulfide

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyl_disulfide

And this comment below contains some basic information on sulfur in the body etc.

Quote:
Some more info on sulfur in general:
Quote: Some random interesting info on studies done on chicken manure and onions in this next link; note that the onions were grown in chicken manure to increase levels of sulfur compounds including disulfides, for health properties, not to cause mass deaths due to disulfides obviously:
Quote: The quote below is from that article above, just retaining the results not the methods to save space, just click the link above to get the whole article if you want it:
Quote: ....The objectives of this investigation were to: i) determine the concentrations of organosulfur compounds (dipropyl disulfide and dipropyl trisulfide) in onion bulbs and ii) investigate the effect of mixing soil with three amendments (sewage sludge, yard waste, and chicken manure) on the concentration of sulfur compounds in onion bulbs....

....We concluded that chicken manure could be exploited in growing onions with health-promoting properties...

....There were about 1.5 mg of the disulfide and 0.8 mg of the trisulfide per 100 g onion bulb. These results are in agreement with the results reported by the onion oil manufacturer and wholesaler in India (Shiva Exports India-2007), [2] who reported that out of all the compounds present in onion, dipropyl disulfide comprises the largest amount of the sulfur compounds present in onion oil....

And yes, next time someone mentions the much-touted risks of garlic again in response to me suggesting its use, I'll be quoting myself on previous threads again, it's simpler than typing it all up over and over and over and over again... Also while I had much of my initial info on garlic etc from my own offline research and studies, I'm still building my little resource collection of online info.

Best wishes to both of you.

 

And I agree, for using inorganic chemicals, once a month is too often to worm. You can kill them by barraging them nonstop with such wormers; certainly very few worm species have the ability to become a life threatening problem within a month. The general health of the animal will control parasites, otherwise you're just propping it up before the inevitable fall.

Sulfur is critical in parasite resistance. It's part of the whole organism and is anti most things harmful to us; if we're low in sulfur we are prone to disease, oxidation, and parasites, and the same is true of animals. Quite often merely upping the sulfur levels in the diet is all that is sufficient to treat even advanced and severe diseases or infestations of parasites.

Best wishes.

 

Your right...I'm not trying to "scaremonger" anyone. As I stated, it's something to think about and something that everyone should research more on their own. That's why I specifically stated that exact point, as well as that it "could" be a "potential" problem and that I "have not seen formal studies" done in birds. I think I made my position pretty clear rather then stating absolutes. I do appreciate all the links and info you posted. My avian vet has recommended not to give my birds garlic on a long term basis for the reason's I noted in my post so that's what I have chosen to do.