dry pox in chick Help!!

[ellieroo]

First time to post in many moons but always read.
Have been raising buckeye chicks in a garage, where else, things were going great until this morn. One little one, they are 4wks old, seems to have black spots bumps on her legs.Am I looking at dry pox?? Ten yrs of chickens and never seen this, advise please. thanks!!

 

[Judy]

Sounds like it. Read here:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/LC-diseases-AvianPox.html

 

[ellieroo]

Thanks been there before posting was hoping for a newly discovered cure. I still don't know if I should wait it out or not? sigh!

 

[Judy]

Mine have it on combs and wattles. I haven't found anything to do for it -- every article I read says there is no treatment.

Somewhere I read that someone cleans off the black spots and puts, I think, Betadine on them, but I can't find it now, and not sure it would serve any purpose anyway.

There's a thread going here about "old time" treatments that said people would put black shoe polish on them. Don't think I want to try that. Shoe polish probably isn't the same stuff it used to be, I figure.

 

[Judy]

You know, you might read up on leg mites. I've only read about them, never seen them, don't know if you might see black spots from them, but I suppose you might, as scabs. I believe the leg scales are supposed to look raised. That is something you do have to treat -- one way is Vaseline on the legs every day.

 

[Sunny Side Up]

There is a wise old lady who is the president of our local Poultry Fanciers' Association, been keeping chickens long enough to know which really did come first, the chicken or the egg. She said that she learned from an even older chicken keeper to apply black liquid wax shoe polish on those fowl pox lesions. Something about sealing them off from the air keeps them from spreading.

My birds often get it in the summer from alllllllll the mosquitoes here in swampy South Fla. I feel so bad for them, you can go out at night & see them swarming around the birds at night, and the poor birds shaking their heads to keep them off. The older birds that have had it before don't get it again, they've developed their own immunity to it. But the young birds will often get it to varying degrees of coverage.

If you put the shoe polish on the lesions when you first notice them, you can keep them from spreading. And that article said it can be further spread from the dry scabs that fell off. So it would be good to keep it from getting worse. It's really tricky to put it on the scabs near their eyes or nostrils, but easy to do on their combs.

It seems most birds will get over it on their own, but the shoe polish helps keep it from spreading more.

 

[Lollipop]

I`ve never seen pox on legs. Could it be mosquito bites? Leg mites don`t create scabs either. I`ve dealt with both over the years and doesn`t sound like either to me. I think I would coat the legs with bag Balm, Corona, or VetRX and see what happens before I would get nervous. Who knows, maybe shoe polish might help, but I doubt pox or mites.

Hey Sunny, is Lee Salmon still the pres of the SFPFA? Sold her some Asils, once upon a time.......Pop

 

[Sunny Side Up]

Quote:
Yup, that's her, still going strong! She's an amazing lady. Check out the Chicken Club (that's what my kids call it) at http://www.PoultryFanciers.com and come down for a meeting, better yet, come down in Jan for the South Florida Fair!

 

[Judy]

Sunny and Pop, so glad you jumped in here with some real knowledge. Learn something new every day. Wasn't sure what kind of shoe polish they meant. Believe I'll go out there and treat those poor birds.

Ellieroo, let us know how it goes with yours.

 

[Lollipop]

ddawn, some folks will say otherwise, but my treatment of pox has always been to innoculate everyone, including the one or three with uglie bumps. That always shortens the spread and the ones showing bumps seem to deal with it fine. At least it doesn`t spread. With a helper, you can do a large (by my standard) flock in under an hour. My pal and I can do 200 birds, most of them penned seperately or in pairs, in just over an hour. The vaccine is cheap and will do way more birds than that.