Disease that takes out part of the Flock every year: Opinions Needed!!

[Yazzo]

Thanks so much for all the opinions and suggestions!
ChooksChick: No, they don't have access to any kind of fungi that I know of.

I have consulted vet manuals and the internet several times, but have never been able to pinpoint exactly what it is. I think that coccidia is a pretty big possibility, but it may just be some kind of flu from the sudden change in temperatures. Luckily, no more chickens have died, although one tough old hen got sick and got through it quite easily. If (god forbid) another chicken dies from this, I will probably send them in to be examined, but for now, I think it's over.

 

[seminolewind]

I've been losing one or two a year or so. Symptoms? No appetite and at the end, green poo. That's it. Otherwise they act normal walking around pecking at the ground, etc, running for a treat, but pecking around it, not eating it.

I finally broke down and ordered a used book called Diseases of Poultry, for $125 bucks! Hopefully I'll find my answer. This last one I did a necropsy on. The gizzard (not crop) was packed full of fibrous material and small stones. Now, for 2 weeks, all I had offered her is soft people food and mush on my patio in a cage. Did her gizzard get impacted? Maybe. The other thing I saw was an abundance of little pea size eggs to be, maybe 20 of them.

So now I am an obsessed nut going over everyone's poo every morning (40 chickens), and making sure their crops are full at night.