Curing sick chickens

[Thunder Cock]

New to the site and wanted to share my experiences as a new chick herder....so far we have only had two sick chickens. Our rooster lost its crow and started wheezing. We quarantined him and gave him anti biotics for three weeks. We have also dewormed the whole flock. His crow came back, 90%, and his wheezing stopped all together. We took him off the antibiotics a week ago and will keep him away from the hens for another 3 weeks so he doesn't breed with the hens until the antibiotics get out of his system. So, he is as healthy as he is gonna get and we didn't lose him. We had one hen act like she was drunk and wasn't eating. We did our research and it seemed as though she had an impacted craw. We gave her bread with some olive oil on it and we massaged her craw and area for a few days. She is now eating and putting some weight on again and now longer walks around lethargically and is laying eggs again. We also had a hen get smooshed by some hog wire. She was under it for a couple of hours before we found her and she was looking pretty rough. We nurtured her back to health and after a few days she was back to her old self. The reason I am posting this is because I got a lot of advice that said to just harvest the chickens and cut my losses. That wasn't the case and we still have two productive hens and our senior rooster is going to be just fine. So, don't give up on your sick chickens, they are more resilient than you think.

 

[MandS]

Well done for persevering. It's hard work nurturing sick chickens. The key, as I have learned over the years is, look out for changes and spot things early before they really take hold. Not always easy as they hide their illnesses quite well and sometimes only show when it is late on.

The other thing I'd add is, you don't always get it right first time but there is so much good information on this site, plus oodles of help, that if you are systematic in diagnosing symptoms and not (as I have been in the past) prefixed on one particular cause/issue, then things often improve.

Encouraging advice - useful sharing.