Help please! My hen has a respiratory disease.

[IncognitoMode4723]

Would it have any bad effects if we did a second round of dewormer 10 days from now just to be sure?

I was wondering: should I deworm the other 2 hens? They have not shown any symptoms yet. However there is supposed to be a lot of rain in my area soon and unfortunately my chickens end up eating a lot of worms after the rain. Or do you only deworm when they start showing symptoms?

Is there anything I can do to help prevent these issues in the future?

 

[Chimkins4Tommie]

My 3 year old black Australorp hen(Bertha) has been having trouble breathing (she holds her beak open and pants) and she sneezes a lot, sometimes very loudly. Sometimes she shakes her head, but not very often. She is lighter than the other 2 hens. She had not been laying eggs for about 4 months, but started laying again on 3/28/2024 (for 11 days).

She started showing symptoms on 3/1/2024 – it has been about a month now. My other 2 hens have not shown any symptoms yet.

There is no signs of trauma, such as bleeding, injury, broken bones or anything like that.

I am not sure what may have caused her respiratory distress, although I do recall that the hens may have eaten around a patch of fungus before she got the issue. She has had other problems in the past – bumblefoot (which never got that bad and has since gone away) and she laid a lash egg when she was about 2 years old. Please see my previous posts on the lash egg and bumblefoot for more information.

Where we live (Austin, Texas) the summers get very hot (100 degrees) but right now the temperatures are in the 70-80s, so I don’t think that heat stress could have anything to do with it.

She has been eating and drinking normally. She eats primarily a complete feed (Purina Layena layer pellets) and water. I hardly ever give my birds treats. When I do give treats, I feed them apple, or yogurt with garlic and ginger.

Her poop is normal – it is not bloody or runny. Please see pic below.

I have not really been treating her with antibiotics or anything as I do not know what disease she exactly has. In addition, I am not a very experienced person when it comes to handling poultry diseases, so I did not want to give her a medication without asking for other people’s opinions on what disease she has and what medication to give.

I do not have access to a nearby veterinarian so I am not able to take her to the vet for help. So unfortunately I am forced to treat her entirely on my own.

I have below a video of her as well exhibiting the condition.

I do not believe that the issue is being caused by worms. I read several people saying that gapeworm is not that common, and that sneezing is not associated with gapeworm. I also saw a video of a chicken with gapeworm, and it did seem like she was behaving the same way as Bertha is.

I will link my album where I have some videos of her so you can see the way she is. I also made a previous post about this back in march. You can read it if you want.


https://www.backyardchickens.com/gallery/albums/users/incognitomode4723.642335/

 

[Chimkins4Tommie]

I have an astralorp with the same problem and I tried 2 different kinds of herbs for respiratory problems for two weeks. Nothing helped because what I thought she had was not a respiratory problem. It was "water belly," which affects breathing. Google it!

 

[IncognitoMode4723]

If you gave the entire dose on bread, the entire dose was consumed, then it should be fine. It would only be less effective if you under dosed. 5 days should treat everything except tapeworm, so no reason to retreat. Retreatment would be needed if symptoms of worms happened, or because of a positive fecal float test. Different parasites have different prepatent periods (the time between exposure and symptoms/positive test results).
I would do the Tylan if symptoms return or get worse.

I did not give her any dewormer today. The symptoms seem to be coming back again. I feel like she is worse than before the treatment.

I am wondering if I messed up on dosage: The first three days I gave her 1.5 mL (she is a 4.6-4.8 lb chicken) and the last three days I gave her 2 mL of dewormer. She only started doing better the last two days when I gave a higher dose. Was it a mistake to change the dose like that? Would that have caused an issue?

Also, here is a picture of one of her poops from today:

 

[IncognitoMode4723]

I bought Tiagard tonight. Is it okay to give it to starting tomorrow? Because I just finished giving her the dewormer.

What is the dosage for Tiagard? How many days do I give it to her and how often a day do I give it? She weighs 4.6-4.8 lbs.

This the product I bought:https://www.amazon.com/TiaGard-Chickens-Pigs-Concentrate-Antibiótico/dp/B0C9LCKT2C/ref=sr_1_2?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.ZSnYDqHH2_VrBnWskeLybZVm0gnWBUIJgit9nbUXgmfGjHj071QN20LucGBJIEps.vaQqc8sOZ5QV1Q47gOvs7I_oD-G7r1gcXc7xqJnCn30&dib_tag=se&keywords=tiagard&mfadid=adm&qid=1713750635&sr=8-2

I also wanted to ask: the past three days when I was giving her dewormer she was doing much better and her symptoms were mostly gone. Why did she get worse right after I stopped giving it to her?

 

[BarnyardChaos]

@IncognitoMode4723 where are you located, if you don't mind sharing?

 

[IncognitoMode4723]

@IncognitoMode4723 where are you located, if you don't mind sharing?

we are in Central Texas

 

[SkyAJK]

Hello,
How is your hen doing now?
I am not a chicken expert so that you know.
Sneezing: Have you try VETRX? Any of my girls sneeze, I rub some of that on their head, beak, comb, wattle, this stopped the sneezing.
Open mouth breathing is sound like gapeworm....
Did she lay an slash egg?
I hope that your hen is better.

 

[nuthatched]

Hello,
How is your hen doing now?
I am not a chicken expert so that you know.
Sneezing: Have you try VETRX? Any of my girls sneeze, I rub some of that on their head, beak, comb, wattle, this stopped the sneezing.
Open mouth breathing is sound like gapeworm....
Did she lay an slash egg?
I hope that your hen is better.

Vet rx is just vicks for chickens, it's just camphor oil. it won't cure anything.

 

[SkyAJK]

I found that it stop my chickens from sneezing and watery nose. It could be that my chickens have a minor cold case.