half worried, help please?

[thomassio]

Well I'm very sad to say that Stanley did not come home with me. I'm gutted, he was my special weirdo.

Ok, so others can benefit.... She was pretty certain it was either salmonella or staphylococcosis. As I'm sure you are aware, both can be serious and quite clearly fatal. So a brief explanation of the symptoms would be that he was a very large boy, but actually quite underweight and his size was due to gas in his belly. His appetite would be explained by him trying to put on weight but passing it straight through his body. The walking problems and lethargy were down to his just being so weak I guess.
He is my first loss and there is nothing I can do for him now. So, it's time to turn my attention to the rest of the flock and pray they don't develop any symptoms. So far they haven't displayed any so my fingers are crossed. A thorough clean out and disinfectant is in order.

I will be calling the supplier in the morning to warn them of the situation as the vet said it's almost certainly something picked up before I bought him.
As a side note.... I don't think it could have saved him because of the nature of the illnesses, but I was most shocked about the overweight/underweight confusion and had I know what to look for in terms of the keel, maybe it wouldn't have been such a surprise.

Thanks to you both Amiga and Miss Lydia for your advice. It's a steep and unpleasant learning curve, but as a friend said to me, and it a very blunt saing, but 'if you are going to keep livestock, sooner or later you will have to face deadstock'.

Poor Stanley. Bless him.

 

[Amiga]

Oh, awful.

Thank you for giving us the details. Ducks can hide illness for a long time.

 

[Miss Lydia]

I'm so very sorry to hear about Stanley, It always heartbreaking when we lose one and like Amiga said they can hide their symptoms so well, Believe it or not after starting going on 10 yrs with ducks I just lost one of my oldest ones a couple weeks ago and most on here have lost some too, so we know exactly how you are feeling.

How long have you had Stanley?

 

[thomassio]

Not very long, just a few weeks. The most frustrating and saddening thing is that I saw him eating plenty and he looked like a big strong boy so at least he wasn't suffering, but now I know he was actually very underweight and that's what was causing the weakness. Just hate thinking about him suffering.

 

[Miss Lydia]

Not very long, just a few weeks. The most frustrating and saddening thing is that I saw him eating plenty and he looked like a big strong boy so at least he wasn't suffering, but now I know he was actually very underweight and that's what was causing the weakness. Just hate thinking about him suffering.

I know you, do but other than his large chest area he looked good to me. I was thinking something was going on in his crop and that's why he looked out of balance. They are just to good at hiding their illnesses but hopefully it was an isolated thing only with him. Try not to beat yourself up you know if you had known it was something so serious you'd have had him looked at a lot quicker. Sometimes things creep up so slowly we just don't catch it in time.