I’am so sorry for your loss! I’ve been dealing with a similar situation and found this post a few days back. This might seem like an odd question especially given that’s it’s been a few months but did you get her from Metzer or do you know if she came from birds that were bred at Metzer?
The reason why I’m asking is I’m wondering if this may be a genetic issue. My sweet Cayuga Moonbeam just passed away yesterday. She was only two years old and she had the same symptoms and she came from Metzer.
Normally I would assume her condition and your duck’s illness were unrelated respiratory illnesses and being the same breed was just coincidence as the symptoms do point to a respiratory illness “gaping, coughing, elevated rear indicates airsacculitis or a mass pushing on the rear airsacks.” However she had no nasal, mouth, or eye discharge also.
But Moonbeam had prior issues, she hadn’t molted normally since her first molt. Incomplete molt can indicate a nutritional deficiency, disease, stress, or injury, but she and the other ducks were otherwise healthy with no bullying and no signs of illness. Boosting her protein and giving her extra vitamins didn’t help, she also didn’t have stress bars which are usually present with a deficiency during molt, just poor quality feathers, she would slowly replace her body feathers over the course of a year but her flight feathers she didn’t replace.
Recently Moon had just finished laying for the season and started coughing, there isn’t a vet that would see her in the foreseeable future so I treated her myself. She was on Tylosin and amoxicillin, she was also wormed, I put her on a B complex and multi-vitamin regimen, it didn’t work. Using VetRx to open up her airways didn’t work. Nebulizing her with rosemary too didn’t help either. I started nebulizing her with amphotericinB as a last resort suspecting it was asper. No change. She hadn’t been quacking but when she did her voice wasn’t altered, that doesn’t mean she didn’t have asper but an altered voice is typical in the later stages.
She began declining the day before yesterday and she passed yesterday afternoon.
Your girl I can see was in her first molt which is a big strain to the immune system, but she didn’t have typical symptoms of a respiratory infection either, usually most bacterial, viral, and even fungal infections will produce nasal, mouth, or even eye discharge as it advances. I didn’t feel a mass in Moonbeam’s abdomen either so she wasn’t eggbound and I doubt there was a tumor. Another form of cancer could have caused their symptoms, and both being very young Cayugas that makes me suspect a genetic issue which made them susceptible to cancer, an immune issue, possibly a liver condition. It’s possible that your duck could have ended up with poor feathering also if she had lived longer.
These two cases could easily be unrelated, but if not and it is a faulty gene then there’s nothing you could have done to save her and I hope that is some small comfort.
For anyone else that finds this this might be something to watch for with your cayugas.
I am hoping whatever was going on with her was not contagious and will not spread to my other ducks. I plan to do a deep clean of the coop today. What can I use to sanitize the coop and run?
