help - Buff Orp with leg mites - update - just died!

[dukecitychick]

My Buff Orp was fine, as far as I could tell, till at least 2 days ago. Yesterday I came home to find her sitting by the edge of the water dish, tail down, eyes closed. I walked right up and picked her up, which is not normal! As soon as I saw her legs I thought uh-oh, leg mites - the scales are all raised and it looks like all the pictures I've seen. I brought her inside for the night, gave her yogurt and scrambled egg and some water (right in front of her so she could reach, as she won't stand). She at a bit, but not much.

Today I went out and got some baby oil, mixed in some tea tree oil, and soaked her legs for a while (thanks to everyone on this site - I found so much helpful leg mite info!). But now she has zero interest in anything - she's just sitting on a towel in the kitchen with her eyes shut. She's kind of holding her wings out from her sides and parting her beak a little. I tried to give her some bread soaked in water, but she won't even open her beak.

So - is this just from the mites sucking her blood or should I be worried about something else? She did just go through her first LOOONNGGG molt, but it seems like her feathers are almost all back in - she hasn't started laying again, though. Also, the lower part of her wattles (whatever the part is that hangs down under her chin) is kind of dry and folded.

What else - there are 3 of them in the coop, shredded paper bedding, they get 18% layer pellets. I was giving them a lot of BOSS for a while because they were all molting and I thought the protein would be good. I did just lose one hen to Coryza about a month ago. We isolated her as soon as we saw symptoms and she never had any other contact with the healthy ones, and none of them had any of her symptoms. The one with coryza was standing till the end, and she was pretty alert too - the BO doesn't have any swelling or discharge (or the STINK) and she's acting totally different.

Should I just give her a few days and see if treating the mites helps? She needs to eat, though - she's so skinny! How do you get a chicken that won't eat to eat?

Thanks in advance!

 

[chookchick]

Please wash that off the legs immediately! Tea tree oil is poisonous to birds. I wish people would stop recommending the use of it for chicken related stuff. I will try and find you the info on this subject. Please find a more mainstream treatment for leg mites, which I can't recall at the moment (sorry).
Info on TTO toxicity:
http://www.exoticbird.com/gillian/teatree.html

Thread on leg mites, with info from threehorses

:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=231770&p=2

The other symptoms sound possible like she may have laying issues--has she laid at all recently? Have you examined her vent area closely? What do her droppings look like? Make sure she is not too hot (panting). Honestly, she does not sound good--please keep us posted on her condition.

 

[dukecitychick]

Well, I'd say the stuff I dipped her legs in was about 1% tea tree oil, so hopefully that's not horrible.

She has not laid in months - I think at first it was daylight (I never did put a light on them) and then she molted. She had one poop in the crate yesterday, which looked like milky diarrhea but also some water spilled, so that may have just dissolved whatever she pooped. I did look at her vent and it looks alright. She has so many new fluffy feathers it's hard to get in there! You're right, though, that maybe she's just hot being in the house (it's about 65 in here).

Once an hour or so she'll try to stand up, but she's super wobbly and she just lays back down.

How do I get this girl to eat something?

 

[aveca]

not that I am a huge fan of vaseline, Im not.... But it absolutly works , you have to be pretty religious about keeping it on but it smothers the mites and thats the end of them. If you can find the refined vaseline its better. You should really treat the whole group...I do it at night when they roost , quietly pick one up after another while helper husband rubs a good amount of it up the legs and all over feet. About 25 years ago we had a run of it at our other farm . We havnt had any leg mites at our older farm in over 20 years.
People who show birds a lot seldome get it cause birds are so clean and thiier legs are oiled, again oils smothers the mite. the heavier the oil the better it works

 

[dukecitychick]

OK, she just pooped a tiny bit of yellow diarrhea with what looks like some white sand in it. What does that mean?

At this point I'm more worried about her "state" than her mites - she has barely opened her eyes all day and hasn't eaten or drank anything. She just kind of rocks back and forth as she breathes with her beak open. Is this normal mite-induced behavior?

 

[aveca]

doesnt sound like digestive system is working proper check crop , is she able to get at grit? Some of the people in here have pretty good remedys to help like yogurt, the pure apple cider vinegars ect...

How old is this bird? could be heart could be viral, does she have any sour smell coming out of her mouth? is skin that is normally pink whitish? try to gather every detail , raspy breathing? discharges?

sometimes they develop heart problems, parasite overload that can cause big problems . It sounds like cardiac problem just by your details

 

[dukecitychick]

I think she just hasn't eaten/drunk in a while - isn't yellow poop indicative of dehydration?

She doesn't have grit with her now, but their run is basically sand, so she shouldn't have a problem with that. She's a little over a year old. No breathing noises, no discharge. She does smell funny now, but I think it's the poop. It's not the Coryza smell.

I thought about squirting yogurt down her throat with a syringe, but I'm afraid it would choke her. She just isn't responding to any stimulus.

 

[aveca]

OK

Is she got any area of skin color that you would say normally be pinkish in color might now be whitish or purple, , the color of her comb would noramlly be red , now look pale, inside of mouth pale? legs pale? This just be an anomoly in 1 bird, sometimes like a person , they will have a gene for deveolping heart problem. If your not having problems with other birds . There are so many things that can happen with chickens. she doesnt sound like she struggeling with an egg, just sounds like circulatory system shutting down. Organs shutting down. Its just me, but I would isolate her into a most comfortable spot you can with food and water right in reach and try to make her as comfortable as possible.

You might research aspirin and chickens and doses per size, I found this bit somewhere in this site, , I use eyedropper and make a liquid out of it.
The correct aspirin dose for chickens is: Approx. 25 mg per pound of chicken's body weight each day. (A standard baby Aspirin is 80 mg,

 

[aveca]

Here is a question and answer about asprin and chickens to ease thier distress. You would want to do more research to break this down into treating one chicken.

Question about Pets:Can you give chickens aspirin?


Yes you can.

ASPIRIN SOLUTION

Used as a general treatment for reducing distress conditions of birds (fever or listlessness) that accompanies many diseases. Dissolve five (5 grain) aspirin tablets in one gallon of water.

Offer this solution free-choice to the birds for the duration of an illness. The solution aspirin equivalent to 25 grains/gallon or 324 mg/gallon of drinking water. The dosage rate is about 25 mg/lb body weight per day.

 

[dukecitychick]

Well, she just died. It was weird - I heard flapping so I ran in and I guess it was her final twitch. It looked like she was vomiting - there was water coming out of her mouth. I held her upside-down so that the water would run out instead of choking her, but it didn't matter. She expelled some more water and went limp.

I did smell all that water she expelled, and it it didn't smell weird or anything. What the heck? Anybody got any ideas? This was about a day and a half of her acting sick!