fowl pox in chicks?

[Ugadano]

How did this turn out? I hope all went well and healed quickly!

I am in SW Oklahoma, and I just noticed my youngest chicks with this about Aug 22,2015, only a month behind the posters in TX (and the day I was leaving for a few days to visit Mom!). They have all been in the same pen for 2 weeks, and only the 2wk olds have this, the chicks that are 3-4 weeks old don't have it. They have wart-like growths on eyelids and the skin around the beak and earlobes. I will check again tomorrow, but haven't seen any on the 29 adults, including the 3 mama hens with the chicks.

I plan to start them on some Turmeric Golden Paste and Vitamin D3 tomorrow, and will put them in a holding pen of some type and only let them back in their tractor after being given the goods. I am reading every post I can find about fowl pox after searching for 'growths' and similar terms, and it is apparently a virus. Without any other infection, pointless to give antibiotics, but I will start probiotics mixed in with the GP VitD3 and some porridge type food to feed it with.

Anyone else ever use Turmeric for anything?

 

[932ninja]

Hi! The chick is still going strong! She/he has only one eye and a slightly deformed beak. It was a very long road of soaking, swabbing, different topicals, and babying. We have a bond now for sure, *she* "Rosa P" comes running when I go out to the back pasture where they are. I don't have any earth shattering advice, it took a lot of time and patience, but looking into her good eye while I was soaking the terrible scab eye melted my heart. The beak had such bad pox growths, once I was able to pick one off with tweezers part of the beak came off too So her top beak is slightly shorter than her bottom. The beak deformity has made it challenging for her to preen herself, so her feathers are messy. I will try to get an updated picture on here!
Good luck! My two cents are ISOLATE so you don't have an epidemic in your flock.... and be patient.

 

[chickens85]

My dad lives in Greece and some of his younger chicks have growths on there face and beak no where else though do you think this could also be fowl pox?

 

[cd3farm]

I have over 200 chicks and chickens and have just discovered fp in almost every run. I read that it is carried by mosquitos and there is nothing you can do for it. I had already put everyone on antibiotics because it seems it can create secondary infections and I had noticed some sneezing and one hen eye swollen. It appears some get it worse than others. I too thought it was from fighting at first. I will continue to keep everyone on antibiotics for a while.

 

[jak2002003]

There is no need for antibiotics when your chickens have fowl pox... in fact the antibiotics will do more harm than good...

Fowl pox is a virus and not killed by antibiotics.

The use of the antibiotics will destroy the bacteria in the chickens guts and make it harder for them to digest food and get the nutrients they need to stay strong and fight off the virus.

Only use the antibiotics if there is actual infection present.... something that has never happened with all my chickens... and the chicks always get fowl pox as they get older... Then they are immune for life from that local strain of the virus.

Chicks seem to get the fowl pox less severe than adults. Kind of like it is in humans with chicken pox.

The chicks seem to get over it quicker and have fewer pox spots.

However, I lot depends of the local strain of the virus and how strong it is... and probably the breed / strain of chickens you keep as to how resistant they are.

I breed my chickens throughout the year and raise about 100 chicks each year. Most get the pox when they are become independent of their mothers and feathered up. Over 10 years of breeding chickens and hundreds of chicks hatched out... I have only once lost a batch of 4 birds to fowl pox.

These were all young roosters and they got severe pox lesions on their faces and eyes.. and died despite assisted feeding and antibiotics.

So if yours chickens have dry fowl pox the advise is just to let nature take its course. Keep them warm, dry and stress free.. with a good diet and vitamins, minerals etc.. and the odds are they will pull through just fine.

Good luck!

 

[SoldierSailor]

I had 4 other creme legbar chicks get sick enough i had to put them down. this little girl developed this eye growth about 1 1/2 weeks after the others got sick.
She is eating and drinking fine no other signs of distress. We have her segregated inside until she completely heals.
How did yours heal up?? Any sight loss?? Did the lesions/growths eventually go back down to normal?

as you can see in the picture she has a pretty gnarly almost tumor grown over her eye. Reading up on fowl pox it says the lesions will heal.

It just seems like it will heal up but be this huge scar, blister looking tumor thing. Will it shrink?