I have a buff orpington pullet (about 5 months old) that has been having consistently black, watery, very stinky poop for about a month now.
She was part of a rescue of chicks from a feed store that had severe, SEVERE coccidiosis in all the chicks in their very very filthy bins (they had gone years without cleaning the bins that hold thousands of chicks each year
And at least half were dying from coccidiosis each year).
Anyway, I immediately began treatment for the coccidiosis when I received them, they were about a week or two old at that point. I’m very experienced with generally treating and identifying cocci in chicks; I’m familiar with its ability to have “rebounds” and that there are different strains that affect different parts of the mucosal lining of the digestive tracts, etc etc.
All of the other chicks have more or less completely recovered now, except this one buff orp chick.
She is the only one that has had this issue, all of her poops, every single one, is watery, pure black, gooey and SMELLY. Whenever she poops, a very loud fart sound accompanies it.
I’ve been keeping her inside so I can observe and treat her accordingly until it’s better. But I can’t for the life of me figure out what is causing this.
I initially thought it might be coccidia of the upper digestive tract, and that the blackness might be from partially digested blood, but treatment of amprolium and later toltrazuril have not yielded any changes.
My next thought was that it may be enteritis as a result of recently overcoming coccidiosis; I’ve tried administering spectinomycin, doxycycline and a variety of probiotics. Nothing has changed yet. If it is enteritis, my understanding is that penicillin or lincospecticin is the preferred treatment (?). I haven’t been able to find a source for linco-spect yet; I have erythromycin in powder form for fish on hand; would that be worth trying?
Thank you for any insight. She is a special girl and I am trying to do anything to help her. There are no avian vets remotely near me. I recently got a biology microscope so I could do my own fecal tests, etc for my birds, but I’m still learning the ropes of it.
She was part of a rescue of chicks from a feed store that had severe, SEVERE coccidiosis in all the chicks in their very very filthy bins (they had gone years without cleaning the bins that hold thousands of chicks each year
And at least half were dying from coccidiosis each year).Anyway, I immediately began treatment for the coccidiosis when I received them, they were about a week or two old at that point. I’m very experienced with generally treating and identifying cocci in chicks; I’m familiar with its ability to have “rebounds” and that there are different strains that affect different parts of the mucosal lining of the digestive tracts, etc etc.
All of the other chicks have more or less completely recovered now, except this one buff orp chick.
She is the only one that has had this issue, all of her poops, every single one, is watery, pure black, gooey and SMELLY. Whenever she poops, a very loud fart sound accompanies it.
I’ve been keeping her inside so I can observe and treat her accordingly until it’s better. But I can’t for the life of me figure out what is causing this.
I initially thought it might be coccidia of the upper digestive tract, and that the blackness might be from partially digested blood, but treatment of amprolium and later toltrazuril have not yielded any changes.
My next thought was that it may be enteritis as a result of recently overcoming coccidiosis; I’ve tried administering spectinomycin, doxycycline and a variety of probiotics. Nothing has changed yet. If it is enteritis, my understanding is that penicillin or lincospecticin is the preferred treatment (?). I haven’t been able to find a source for linco-spect yet; I have erythromycin in powder form for fish on hand; would that be worth trying?
Thank you for any insight. She is a special girl and I am trying to do anything to help her. There are no avian vets remotely near me. I recently got a biology microscope so I could do my own fecal tests, etc for my birds, but I’m still learning the ropes of it.
