Help please

[Armando I 3454]

I'm new here and I have a problem. 2 of my cockerels are sick and 2 hens are currently sick. Some are worse than others, there symptoms are clear mucus coming out of their nose, foamy eye, their eyes are starting to swell, they sneeze, and they have a raspy sound when they breath sometimes. I am planning to give them Tylan 50 in the injection form but if anybody has any thoughts on what it is please tell me. Also if there are alternatives instead of tylan 50 that would work better. Thanks.

 

[Pyxis]

The really devastating thing about these diseases is that a lot of them can't ever be cured once the birds have them. You can treat the symptoms but they will reappear every time the bird is stressed, such as coming into lay, during a molt, during a cold snap, etc.

You can try to treat this and it will get rid of the symptoms but the birds will possibly carry the disease for life and if you ever do get more birds they will pass this on to them. If there is a bad smell coming from them, especially from their nasal discharge, it's likely coryza. If no smell, you can try treating for mycoplasma as it is possibly that. To find out definitively what it is you could ask a vet to run a blood test (which will probably be expensive and upwards of $100) or you could cull one and send it for necropsy. These are the only ways you will ever know for sure what this is though, and you have to be aware your birds will quite possibly be sick for life even if you do treat them now.

There are a couple viral diseases it could be too, such as infectious bronchitis, and that would just have to run its course on its own and treating won't help, but again, to find out what it is you'd have to test or cull one and send it for a necropsy if you want to be sure.

 

[Armando I 3454]

I don't smell anytime no from there discharge said I don't think it's coryza and I don't plan on giving birds away or selling them. I want to have a closed flock for eggs but will this affect their laying? They haven't layed yet but I'm planning on building nesting boxes for them. Do you think I should just cull all of the birds and then disinfect everything and start again?

 

[Pyxis]

It might affect their laying; birds that have diseases like mycoplasma don't tend to lay as well. Plus every time they had a flare up you'd have to treat them and then you wouldn't be able to eat any eggs they did lay until the withdrawal period is over.

Before culling the whole flock, if that's what you decide to go with, it might be a better idea to cull just one and send it for a necropsy first so you know what you're dealing with and don't cull them all for a disease that will eventually go away.