Coccidiosis outbreak?

[MavisMama]

Raw garlic - chopped into their feed? cloves for them to peck at free will? I, too, am worried about losing any more to the cocci. Will do whatever I need to in order to prevent that from happening again.

 

[chooks4life]

Raw garlic - chopped into their feed? cloves for them to peck at free will? I, too, am worried about losing any more to the cocci. Will do whatever I need to in order to prevent that from happening again.

I mince the raw garlic and mix it in their feed. Some will peck whole cloves, and even swallow whole cloves, but it's best minced for them. Damaging the clove is what creates Allicin due to the enzymes in the juices interacting.

Best wishes.

 

[MavisMama]

thank you. I really appreciate you taking the time to reply. I have garlic in my garden - will mince & add it to the feed in the morning

 

[MavisMama]

should this be a daily portion of the ration or provided periodically?

 

[chooks4life]

thank you. I really appreciate you taking the time to reply. I have garlic in my garden - will mince & add it to the feed in the morning

You're very welcome. Raw garlic for cocci is actually an ancient cure, pre-modern pharmaceutical treatments, used in many countries, and I've yet to see anything have the success rate garlic does. I was quite surprised when I joined this forum and found so many people still losing chickens to it, experiencing it as some terrible scourge, since my experience had always been that it was a non-issue, as it was so easily prevented and treated.

should this be a daily portion of the ration or provided periodically?

That's up to you. It should work just fine either way. For someone who doesn't get in new stock all the time, periodical should be fine. I'd give them a strong dose to begin with, treat the soil with the right lime, and then they shouldn't need continual garlic. I bring in new stock regularly, have visitors with their own stock come over regularly, etc... So I use it almost continually, just in lower doses; at the first sign of possible illness, giving them a strong dose of raw garlic will almost always set them right. Actually I've yet to see it fail there. Mareks' and Leucosis are the two main diseases I'm still working on learning how to defeat, but they're not an issue in my flock right now.

In order to introduce them gently as per most advice with poultry or other livestock, you could either add a lower dose initially for a week straight before amping it up, or just do one day on, one day off, whatever you feel is best when introducing new feeds, in order to give their guts time to adjust. That may be overcautious and unnecessary though... I never gave new stock that extra buffer of time, lol, just put them straight onto the same diet my present stock are on. Never had any issues with it. Historically people haven't introduced them slowly to garlic as by the time they needed it, it was a life or death issue. But they often still fasted them first which can be crucial in treating some diseases without a high failure rate.

A clove per bird per day is the basic historical maintenance/medicinal dose, you can raise it to as many as they want to eat per day but having done tests with garlic on my birds (not claiming they're scientific tests obviously, just personal experimentation) I believe that a much smaller dose would still do the job, even when given less frequently. Perhaps as low as a quarter of a clove per day, one clove per 4 birds... Still finding out what is best there, different strains of garlic have different strengths and levels of medicinal properties, with organic and heritage varieties being the best, but conventional and modern cultivars will still almost always do the job as well.

Homegrown garlic is likely stronger than commercially grown garlic and you may be able to use just the leaves or less of a clove to bird ratio with equivalent results, I'd be surprised if that wasn't the case, provided of course that your soil is healthy. Rue used to be used for the same issues in poultry, in future I want to experiment with that since it was reckoned to be superior to garlic for poultry use and of course it'd be easier for the birds to self medicate with it... A user on this forum told me though that she's sensitive to Rue, it caused rashes for her, so best to be aware of that possibility.

For best medicinal effects fresh and raw is unbeatable for most issues, but dried and granulated can still be very helpful, and fermented as well provided it's not been irradiated or excessively heated.

If you suspect cocci is already present in large doses in their guts, close to or at the level required to cause clinical coccidiosis, then you can just give them a strong dose to begin with for the first week, so at least one clove per bird per day, chances are that would take care of the issue immediately but a week should still make it doubly certain.

How much you give them per month you can experiment with, at this stage I reckon a good dose once a week should be enough for the average healthy flock on a decent diet with a decent environment, but that's a theory, different flocks with different diets, environments, health concerns etc may need more.

You could use granulated garlic more often and save the raw minced garlic for special top-up treatments to save on financial outlay, generally I give mine a tonic treatment once a month including other herbs like raspberry leaf, cayenne, etc. I wonder what specific native plants in the wild they use to treat themselves; some people say herbs should only be used as special medicines, once in a blue moon or after symptoms appear, but I don't believe that's natural since in the wild they have constant access to herbs and these herbs form part of their continual diet, most of them are not reserved for special occasions though extra may be eaten depending on need. They're just part of the natural fodder.

I don't yet have evidence to support this finding but have reason to believe the byproducts of garlic in their feces also have some effect on treating the pathogen levels in the soil. Just going by experience there. Certainly it quickly makes a positive impact on their coop soil, reduces stink etc... For treatment of most diseases a small fast is very beneficial before introducing the medicine, well, with natural medicines that's more ideal since they work by working with the body, not bludgeoning the whole organism until whatever is weaker dies. During the fast the body stops putting so much of its resources to digestion and can then focus them on healing and immune response. For chooks, a small fast would be a half a day or one morning, or a whole day. They will voluntarily fast when sick almost as a rule for a day or more, and unfortunately this is the time when many people worry and forcefeed them, which can actually be the straw that breaks the camel's back so to speak.

Best wishes.

 

[MavisMama]

Thank you so much. I really appreciate your thorough instructions with rationale - I'm printing your messages for reference & wonder if you're published.
I've implemented the garlic into their daily ration and, in addition to complete resolve of the mucousy stools, they seem more at ease and social! I wish I would've known this before losing my little Roo. Again, thank you for taking the time to help me take better care of my feathered friends.

 

[chooks4life]

Thank you so much. I really appreciate your thorough instructions with rationale - I'm printing your messages for reference & wonder if you're published.
I've implemented the garlic into their daily ration and, in addition to complete resolve of the mucousy stools, they seem more at ease and social! I wish I would've known this before losing my little Roo. Again, thank you for taking the time to help me take better care of my feathered friends.

You're most welcome. It's great to hear they're doing better. It's an interesting observation you've made there about them seeming more social, it's often forgotten that illness or poor health really does impact their social dynamic and behavior, they can be nastier just because they're unwell.

Parasite and pathogen overburden is one way to provoke the triggering of some kind of 'depopulation instinct' leading to escalating violence; lack of complete nutrition is another trigger. Some birds merely become discontent, others become outright violent. I find that more than population density or gender ratio, health is the stronger driving force behind social cohesion. Well, my results there are probably a bit skewed because I did cull strictly against bullies and cannibals and do not breed such individuals, and I don't scrimp on their nutrition. But mental health is still one form of health, largely based on physical health, and the neurotic, obsessive, abnormally vicious behaviors some chickens exhibit are certainly not due to mental health.

No, I'm not published, I'm still very much a learner myself, but alternative therapies are one thing I was raised with and have done a fair bit of reading up on. I would have to do a heck of a lot more learning before I'd try to write up some stuff for newer poultrykeepers than myself, in anything more comprehensive than these posts on this forum. Some people do ask me to, sometimes, which I think shows a need for someone who takes the time to share the 'why' --- it's not that many experts don't know, just that they don't share it. It's important that people know.

While I've learned many tried and true facts from various individuals who were/are experts in their fields (both natural therapy and 'conventional'/pharmaceutical therapy users/researchers etc) I have not yet found a single individual who was right 100% of the time, so it's always necessary to continue to collect more info both old and new. What we know changes with new discoveries but some apparent 'discoveries' are flawed and misleading, makes it harder. Nobody has 100% of the pieces of the puzzle. One of the perks of natural medicines is that they have a long, long history behind them, unlike newly formulated drugs etc with their unknown side effects. Plus natural therapies (of course) naturally work better within the body.

Any medicine is potentially dangerous if the person applying it doesn't know how, and the 'why' is very important too, so I do try to provide that in all areas I'm familiar with. It's risky to be blindly following instructions when you don't know why you're doing what you're doing, too many books tell you what to do and not why, which leaves room for misunderstanding and mistakes.

It's definitely worth taking the time to learn to use herbal medicine. I've been outright skeptical myself about some of the claims I've read or heard about herbs, until I've tested them and found the results are just amazing... Took me years to find some of the science behind how some herbs work, and so many more have not yet been studied. One often-said thing on this forum is that people advising use of natural therapies to control parasites in poultry 'have no links or citations to offer in support of that' --- this is not true, just that most of us get very tired of always being demanded to provide info to someone who is clearly contemptuous of the subject. Pubmed for example has information on herbal anthelmintics, wormers, etc, that's one site most people here hold in high esteem, it's not like the info is not out there. But you can find studies pro or anti anything... It's really too bad most chemical users refuse to even trial herbal medicine, but it is their choice and I respect that.

That said, while one is learning to use natural alternatives, I do believe it's probably wise to keep some info on their chemical alternatives, just in case, and possibly some supplies if you think it may be necessary. If you get a new animal which you find is near death from parasite overburden, for example, and you're not confident you have the knowledge/time/resources to treat it naturally, by all means use whatever you have on hand or can easily get.

Best wishes.

 

[ryanhodapp]

I am going to try this too. We have had so much rain that our coop and run are waterlogged and coccidiosis has been a problem. I am currently nursing my 7!week old Polish. She has eaten almost a whole ear of corn over a few hours so I am hoping she is going to get better.

 

[chooks4life]

I am going to try this too. We have had so much rain that our coop and run are waterlogged and coccidiosis has been a problem. I am currently nursing my 7!week old Polish. She has eaten almost a whole ear of corn over a few hours so I am hoping she is going to get better.

Hope it works for you too, it's been a lifesaver for many of my animals. I don't just use it for coccidia control in chickens, but also ruminants and other species too.

Though it's a bit too late to prevent coccidia buildup in the animals by liming the soil, I would still do that, using calcium carbonate, personally. It can help kill the anerobic bacteria and so forth that tend to experience population explosions in constantly wet soil.

You can't really have healthy animals on sick soil so it's always worth trying to keep the soil healthy too, and thereby alleviate the problems caused by compacted, acidic and soured soil due to constant presence of animals on the same soil 24/7, with the attendant fecal buildup and then waterlogging and stagnation. Buying a bale of hay to throw down on it as a surface layer after liming might help, depending on the depth of the mud.

Best wishes.

 

[itokuzu]

Can one use the jar of minced garlic or even the garlic supplement pills that you get from grocery stores? Or should I buy a clove of garlic? I'm thinking my youngest have cocci (they have been separated since I got them Wednesday) and I'm treating them with poly vi sol,.And the milk flush right now. If I can give them garlic and help them not get sick, I'm all for it. We're huff users of garlic tabs in the winter to ward off colds