Few chickens losing weight but acting normal.

[PoultryPedia]

You can buy Fenbenzadole as Safeguard liquid goat dewormer at many feed stores, if you want to use it. It's about $17 for a small bottle. You can also use it to deworm your cats & dogs, using the doses that are appropriate for those species.

 

[SupraMom]

I've separated all thin birds, tomorrow i'm going to see if our vet (dog/cat) can check their poop for worms.
Checked them again for mite/lice and found nothing.
I did notice one chicken lost around 1/4 of her feathers in the last couple of days, she's not one of my thin ones also noticed one of the thin ones was chased and picked on a fair amount by the other girls.

 

[SupraMom]

I found mold in my chicken scratch bag :-( I don't know how i never noticed it, I don't really give them a lot of scratch but I wanted to finish this bag so a few weeks ago I started giving it them; I threw the rest out yesterday I'll look up that link again on fungal infections.
Can they die from this?

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Yes. In the past I've thrown bad grain out for the wild birds and they refuse to eat it.
I had a friend in Florida that lost a whole flock of young birds. They thought it was coccidia but upon doing a necropsy it turned out to be botulism from bad feed.

The good thing is yours aren't dead now so, whatever it is, they can recover.

 

[PoultryPedia]

I had three birds starve to death from what I'm pretty positive was fungal infection in their digestive tracts. Two of them I nursed for months, but didn't really know what was going on & how to feed & treat appropriately.

I've posted what I learned on that Fungal Infections info page. If your birds have this problem, maybe they will have a good chance of recovering with right treatment.

 

[SupraMom]

Thanks again for the information on fungal infections. I'm presently treating them, did the intestinal flush to help remove toxins, gave them ACV, vet rx, rooster booster and one other thing which I can't remember what it's called (love getting old, not alzheimer's yet just someteimers lol). Since I've separated the questionable ones I've noticed that their feathers aren't as ruffled.

 

[SupraMom]

Update: I am seeing an improvement, I think adding the additional feeders are making a difference, of course I did all the other above mentioned things too.
My birds do seem to pick on each other a lot, so I think I've got a stress situation going on also; since I separated the thinnest and most ruffled ones, those seem more relaxed and gaining weight, I tried to let them out with the others but they wouldn't come out of the little coop, I can't keep them in my sick coop forever so I'm considering giving them away :-(.

 

[PoultryPedia]

Sounds like stress for you, too! But very glad there's been some improvement.