- Jul 4, 2014
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Pardon the length of this post, but this has been going on for so long and there are so many weird details that seem potentially important. A million heartfelt thanks to anyone with the patience to wade through and offer advice.
We got five chicks total in late February--first a batch of two, then a second batch of three. Within a few days one chick from the batch of three died. She had been repeatedly using her beak to pull on her left wing (to the point of sometimes making herself fall over) in the day before her death. I found her dead splayed out under the heat lamp. At this point they were about a week old.
The other chicks never pulled on their wings. However, they did start sneezing, and one of the chicks from the group of three also became pretty lethargic and stopped eating much. We gave them a supplement from the feed store—Nutirsource Baby Chick Jumpstart.
The lethargic chick perked up and went back to eating, However, at around this time all of the chicks began having many loose brown poops that smelled horrible. This continued, and we took them all into the vet. The vet looked at their poops (under a microscope, I guess?) and said they had a yeast overgrowth in their guts of a yeast most commonly seen in rabbits. He told us to begin feeding BeneBac and to add apple cider vinegar to the water.
With this treatment, we stopped seeing as many of the loose brown poops (though still some), but they also started having poops that appeared somewhat to totally undigested (i.e. green grainy poops with little form and huge water stains around them, as well as grainy green poops with no form at all that just looked like a wet splatter in the box.
We decreased the amount of apple cider vinegar from what the vet had recommended and took them back to the vet after a few weeks of continued weird poops (fewer loose browns, but many poops that looked under-digested and had water marks around them).
The vet looked again, found half as much yeast, and told us to continue with the BeneBac and also to begin adding healthy poops from our adult chickens into the babies food and water.
We began to see a poop pattern:
--1-2 days of poops that mostly looked quite normal
--Followed by up to a week + of poops that were mostly “under-digested” (both formed with water mark and unformed splatters). We occasionally still saw the loose brown stinky poops as well.
This has gone on for several months now, with the vet encouraging us to just keep doing what we’re doing. He suspected a possible bacterial enteritis alongside the persistent yeast issue, but hoped the BeneBac and healthy grown up poops could be enough to knock it out.
For all this time the two pairs of chickens have been living separately, as they unfortunately did not get along at all even as little chicks. The group that is slightly younger (and in which the third chick died early on) gradually began to get better. They have now been totally recovered for just over a month and have moved in with the grown up chickens.
The other chick pair continues to have the wacky poop pattern. It is driving me NUTS. WE really need to get them outside and integrated. For the last several months, they have been outside in a daytime run and coming in at night because we do not have a second secure coop for them to sleep in.
We brought a third sample of their poop (including a loose brown stinky one and one that looked under-digested and grainy) to the vet to check. He reported that they still had a yeast overgrowth and finally agreed to put them on a two-week course of Fluconazole. He suggested that we try the Fluconazole for 5 days and begin Baytril if we did not see improvement.
We began Fluconazole a week ago (June 27th). Their poops immediately began looking better. Their nighttime poops in the box (the only ones we can really accurately monitor) looked very firm and quite small. This is the same way the other pairs poops looked as they got better.
We were so thrilled. Then, on the sixth day, Wednesday morning, all of the poops in the box looked really bad. There were under-digested formless poops and a variety of the loose brown stinky ones.
I upped my BeneBac efforts (so hard to get them to eat this), and crossed my fingers. Their poops on Thursday morning looked improved, but not as good as in the preceding days. I emailed the vet to inquire if this all might be the expected pattern with Fluconazole.
He thinks we should be seeing almost completely normal stools by now if the Fluconazole is working, but he thought if the loose poops were only for one day we should proceed without Baytril.
Yesterday afternoon I was able to spot several poops outside in the run that didn’t look good. They were different, however, from the poops we’ve seen before. These ones are hard to describe, watery/mucous-y with little ‘strings’ of winding solid poop within the wet clear part. Hope this halfway makes sense.
Last night I gave a second dose of BeneBac in white rice (1 teaspoon per bird). This morning the one chick (Bell) looks to have had a number of normal smallish poops in the box. The other, Fifi, did not appear to have pooped during the night except for a very small loose poop that had dried completely. However, when she flew up to the edge of the box, she had a huge, wet, mucous-y poop splat with the little strings of solid poop inside.
Throughout this whole ordeal, it’s been our impression that Fifi’s gut is more compromised than the other birds. My hunch is that Bell would have already recovered if she wasn’t hanging around with Fifi. Fifi tends to not poop during the night, and she always has a huge poop in the morning on the edge of the box. Over the past week, these morning poops have sometimes had form (unusual for her morning poops) but they have always been very soft.
A note on energy/behavior: Throughout the last several months, none of the chicks have been low energy or dragging. They eat well, run around, and seem generally very cheerful and spunky.
In the vet’s inspection of the chicks’ poops, he has not seen parasites. As I mentioned above, he has speculated about possible bacterial enteritis, but has been very hesitant to give antibiotics that might knock their gut flora further out of whack unless absolutely necessary.
My burning question now (help!) is how to proceed. Do I start Baytril immediately? The vet’s latest instruction is to start Baytril if we are seeing consistently runny poops. Is infection unlikely given the chicks’ high energy and behavior? Do I ditch my vet (who is known for being a fabulous and knowledgeable chicken vet among my vet and animal-loving friends)? Do I continue with Fluconazole alone, since the poops really have changed over the last week, even if Fifi’s at least, are not looking normal? Do I figure the BeneBac (and especially the extra dose I gave last night) might have been enough to mess with Fifi’s poop this morning?
I am tearing my hair out here and will be grateful for any insights or suggestions anyone can provide. Has anyone had a similar experience? What am I (and my vet) missing?!
We got five chicks total in late February--first a batch of two, then a second batch of three. Within a few days one chick from the batch of three died. She had been repeatedly using her beak to pull on her left wing (to the point of sometimes making herself fall over) in the day before her death. I found her dead splayed out under the heat lamp. At this point they were about a week old.
The other chicks never pulled on their wings. However, they did start sneezing, and one of the chicks from the group of three also became pretty lethargic and stopped eating much. We gave them a supplement from the feed store—Nutirsource Baby Chick Jumpstart.
The lethargic chick perked up and went back to eating, However, at around this time all of the chicks began having many loose brown poops that smelled horrible. This continued, and we took them all into the vet. The vet looked at their poops (under a microscope, I guess?) and said they had a yeast overgrowth in their guts of a yeast most commonly seen in rabbits. He told us to begin feeding BeneBac and to add apple cider vinegar to the water.
With this treatment, we stopped seeing as many of the loose brown poops (though still some), but they also started having poops that appeared somewhat to totally undigested (i.e. green grainy poops with little form and huge water stains around them, as well as grainy green poops with no form at all that just looked like a wet splatter in the box.
We decreased the amount of apple cider vinegar from what the vet had recommended and took them back to the vet after a few weeks of continued weird poops (fewer loose browns, but many poops that looked under-digested and had water marks around them).
The vet looked again, found half as much yeast, and told us to continue with the BeneBac and also to begin adding healthy poops from our adult chickens into the babies food and water.
We began to see a poop pattern:
--1-2 days of poops that mostly looked quite normal
--Followed by up to a week + of poops that were mostly “under-digested” (both formed with water mark and unformed splatters). We occasionally still saw the loose brown stinky poops as well.
This has gone on for several months now, with the vet encouraging us to just keep doing what we’re doing. He suspected a possible bacterial enteritis alongside the persistent yeast issue, but hoped the BeneBac and healthy grown up poops could be enough to knock it out.
For all this time the two pairs of chickens have been living separately, as they unfortunately did not get along at all even as little chicks. The group that is slightly younger (and in which the third chick died early on) gradually began to get better. They have now been totally recovered for just over a month and have moved in with the grown up chickens.
The other chick pair continues to have the wacky poop pattern. It is driving me NUTS. WE really need to get them outside and integrated. For the last several months, they have been outside in a daytime run and coming in at night because we do not have a second secure coop for them to sleep in.
We brought a third sample of their poop (including a loose brown stinky one and one that looked under-digested and grainy) to the vet to check. He reported that they still had a yeast overgrowth and finally agreed to put them on a two-week course of Fluconazole. He suggested that we try the Fluconazole for 5 days and begin Baytril if we did not see improvement.
We began Fluconazole a week ago (June 27th). Their poops immediately began looking better. Their nighttime poops in the box (the only ones we can really accurately monitor) looked very firm and quite small. This is the same way the other pairs poops looked as they got better.
We were so thrilled. Then, on the sixth day, Wednesday morning, all of the poops in the box looked really bad. There were under-digested formless poops and a variety of the loose brown stinky ones.
I upped my BeneBac efforts (so hard to get them to eat this), and crossed my fingers. Their poops on Thursday morning looked improved, but not as good as in the preceding days. I emailed the vet to inquire if this all might be the expected pattern with Fluconazole.
He thinks we should be seeing almost completely normal stools by now if the Fluconazole is working, but he thought if the loose poops were only for one day we should proceed without Baytril.
Yesterday afternoon I was able to spot several poops outside in the run that didn’t look good. They were different, however, from the poops we’ve seen before. These ones are hard to describe, watery/mucous-y with little ‘strings’ of winding solid poop within the wet clear part. Hope this halfway makes sense.
Last night I gave a second dose of BeneBac in white rice (1 teaspoon per bird). This morning the one chick (Bell) looks to have had a number of normal smallish poops in the box. The other, Fifi, did not appear to have pooped during the night except for a very small loose poop that had dried completely. However, when she flew up to the edge of the box, she had a huge, wet, mucous-y poop splat with the little strings of solid poop inside.
Throughout this whole ordeal, it’s been our impression that Fifi’s gut is more compromised than the other birds. My hunch is that Bell would have already recovered if she wasn’t hanging around with Fifi. Fifi tends to not poop during the night, and she always has a huge poop in the morning on the edge of the box. Over the past week, these morning poops have sometimes had form (unusual for her morning poops) but they have always been very soft.
A note on energy/behavior: Throughout the last several months, none of the chicks have been low energy or dragging. They eat well, run around, and seem generally very cheerful and spunky.
In the vet’s inspection of the chicks’ poops, he has not seen parasites. As I mentioned above, he has speculated about possible bacterial enteritis, but has been very hesitant to give antibiotics that might knock their gut flora further out of whack unless absolutely necessary.
My burning question now (help!) is how to proceed. Do I start Baytril immediately? The vet’s latest instruction is to start Baytril if we are seeing consistently runny poops. Is infection unlikely given the chicks’ high energy and behavior? Do I ditch my vet (who is known for being a fabulous and knowledgeable chicken vet among my vet and animal-loving friends)? Do I continue with Fluconazole alone, since the poops really have changed over the last week, even if Fifi’s at least, are not looking normal? Do I figure the BeneBac (and especially the extra dose I gave last night) might have been enough to mess with Fifi’s poop this morning?
I am tearing my hair out here and will be grateful for any insights or suggestions anyone can provide. Has anyone had a similar experience? What am I (and my vet) missing?!
