Diagel for chickens?

[RGB RIP]

One of my chickens has had explosive, completely liquid diarrhea for weeks, and I took her to the vet about 3 weeks ago. After weeks of waiting for blood/fecal results, they didn't turn up anything unusual. Probiotics and changing out her feed have done nothing. The vet left a message recommending Diagel, but her practice doesn't have it in stock. I have been unable to get an answer about dosage, or whether there's a specific type of Diagel I need to buy. (What I see online only says it's for dogs, cats, and horses.)

I'm wondering if anyone on this forum has any experience giving Diagel to chickens, and if so, what was the dosage and did it work?

(She's also molting and is being very fussy about food - she won't eat yogurt, cottage cheese, pumpkin puree, or even dried mealworms. So I'm having a hard time getting medications into her. Any advice about that would be appreciated as well.)

 

[Lacy Duckwing]

@Wyorp Rock @Eggcessive

 

[Eggcessive]

I had never heard of diagel before, so looked it up to see ingredients:
https://www.drugs.com/vet/diagel-large-dog.html
Did the vet know much about chickens, or did they check the crop for impaction or sour crop? What is her crop like now? It should be empty and flat first thing in the morning, and fill up by evening roost time. What do you normally feed her?

Does she lay eggs? How old is she? Has she recently been molting or anything else unusal?

 

[RGB RIP]

Well, let's see... She's 21 months old, just finished molting, and was a very productive layer up until she started molting. (She hasn't restarted, but I figure that's not unusual in January). She was sold to me as a RIR chick, but she grew up to have more of that auburn color like a Red Star rather than the deep red/brown I see in pictures of RIRs. So who knows...

The vet was recommended to me as one of the only vets in our area that sees chickens and other livestock animals. But like most vets right now, she's really slammed, and I had the sense they're not living up to their normal standard of care right now. It took me weeks to get even a callback after the initial visit, and I got concerned because I know with sick birds, time is important.

No issues with the crop, and the vet said in general she seemed to be in great body condition. Fecal and blood tests came back negative for bacterial infection and parasites. (Calcium was a little low, but she was in the middle of a heavy molt at the time, so that wasn't too surprising.)

I eventually did get the Diagel from the vet (it was the small dog formulation), and I have to say it did firm up the stools... but only for a few days. She's back to very liquid poop that seems to be mostly urine. But otherwise, her energy is good, she seems calm and happy.

I was feeding her Kelly's lay pellets (plus some oyster shell, and mealworms and soldier fly larvae for treats.). I thought the food might be an issue, so I switched to Purina Layena crumble. She seems to be a lot more enthusiastic about eating the Layena, but it didn't make a difference as far as her problem.

So either it's like a few other people have said - and she's just a healthy chicken who drinks a lot of water and pees a lot... or she has some kind of kidney problem the vet didn't detect. (If it's the latter, I don't know if there's anything I can really do about it, other than supply plenty of fresh water.)

I also thought maybe she was getting into something in the yard that was upsetting her digestion. But I kept all the chickens in the run for a couple of weeks to restrict their foraging, and it didn't make a difference. (Plus, she's the only bird who is having a problem.)