Thursday, because of the Holiday and limited stores open, we could not find anything to treat the lice. I gave Ariel a bath with blue dawn dish soap and I swear she enjoyed it! As soon as she touched the warm water she laid right down and help perfectly still while I washed her. Even talking to me softly the entire time... I see how easily you can end up with a house chicken lol. Blow drying her was taking forever so I set her kennel up in front of a portable heater until we had her dried. Saturday I finally bought some Sevin and treated all 20 of my flock... it wasn't nearly as hard as I anticipated. In the morning I went into the coop and brought them outside one by one and powdered them up, keeping their faces inside my robe so the dust wouldn't get in their faces. In hindsight I'm not sure I got their heads and the crests on the new girls good enough, but I plan on treating the next two weekends again. I removed everything from the nesting boxes, powder them and put in new bedding. I also rubbed Sevin into the wood of the coop everywhere with my gloved hand and aired it out all day. Hopefully two more weeks of this and I'll have it solved for good!
In the meantime, Ariel's eye MIGHT be looking a little better, not positive. But she's eating very well, drinking plenty of water with electrolytes, vitamins, and probiotics. Can they eat more out of boredom? Or is it just more obvious how much they poop when they are in a small space? Holy cow... but on the good side, according to the poop chart I found online, her poop looks completely normal. We are now treating her eye with the antibiotic ointment and also used an NFZ puffer once today but not sure how much I could really get into her eye.
At what point do I try to an antibiotic? Or how do I know it's not a permanent injury? I feel bad keeping her away from the rest of the flock, but I know it's for the best.
The biggest lesson I've learning in this mess is I'll never buy grown birds from anyone again, or at least I'll do my research and inspect the birds well. I let the man load them into my car and never put my hands on them myself. Only when I got them home did I start to see signs of what poor shape they were in. Since then I've done a ton of reading and realized they are in worse shape then I imaged.. broken tail feathers, rough feathers, scabs on their pale combs, etc. I'm hoping this all equates to the lice making them anemic... but we'll see. The difference in how they feel and look compared to my previous flock is night and day. The very "helpful" man I purchased them from has since stopped responding to my emails and has removed his craigslist ads. Hmmmm, go figure. I put my entire flock at risk here... my sweet sweet girls I've raised from a few days old and I feel terrible. HUGE lesson learned!!!
I feel bad about that.
