hen gasping, treated w/fenbendazole, no improvement

[drsooseme2]

I noticed her gasping Friday afternoon, standing in the same place, not grazing. When I checked her at dusk she was in a sleeping box still gasping. She hadn't eaten, crop was empty. We brought her in the garage and put her in a rubbermaid tub. I googled and got the fenbedazole for horses and gave her a pea size (0.4g??) Fri night, sat twice, sun twice and this morning and she seems to be worse. Her comb is bluish and she's no longer standing. As of this morning, she only sits, mostly head down, eyes closed. She will swallow pellets if I can get them in when she takes a breath and she will swallow water and meds. As of last night I did see her drink water out of the bowl. Today I also gave her wazine by mouth and she just let really watery stool that smelled like burnt matches. I'm assuming from all meds and not much food.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Eggcessive]

You didn't say what you were treating for--was it gapeworm? Gasping is more a sign of respiratory disease or aspergillosis, a fungal infection. If she is not able to stand, and can't hold her head up I would also wonder about botulism. Does she have any other signs of respiratory infection such as sneezing, nasal discharge, bubbles in eyes, or eye or facial swelling?

 

[Eggcessive]

Here are 3 good links to reading about the diseases I mentioned:
http://www.thepoultrysite.com/diseaseinfo/19/botulism
http://msucares.com/poultry/diseases/disfungi.htm
http://www.thepoultrysite.com/diseaseinfo/7/aspergillosis

 

[Eggcessive]

Aspergillosis is fairly common, and chickens get it from eating something moldy, perhaps unkown to the owner. It can come from moldy grain, mold spores in the coop litter from getting wet, or from other sources. There isn''t much treatment except supportive.

 

[dan buss]

try entirelypets.com look for swine wormer it works on gamebirds I used it for gape worms its the stuff to use. feed it to them twice a day mixed with there feed with oil . look for my coments in there by kapow that would be me. it's in a ten lb pail

 

[drsooseme2]

She died. I thought it was gapeworm. But it could be aspergillus. The summer garden probably starting to mold. She didn't have any nose or eye discharge. No sneezing, swelling, eye bubbles. She could stand Fri-sun. Just today she didn't have anymore energy. All she was doing was standing. I don't think she had slept at all at least since Friday. She wasn't eating. She only ate what few pellets I could get down her in between gasps. I dipped the pellets in fenbendezole and she swallowed them fine.

She wasn't getting enough oxygen. She got to a suffocation point and flailed out of the box and had a seizure type episode and died. I'll take her body to UC Davis avian lab tmrw and I'll post the results to help someone in the future.

Thanks everyone for posting.

 

[Eggcessive]

So sorry for your loss. I'm glad you are getting the necropsy.

 

[dan buss]

yes that sounds just like gape worm weight loss head down can hardly breath beck wide open have the time. I lost a lot of birds to gape worms so I was useing avitrol plus but the birds do not like it at all in there water so it did not work to well as I have around 100 birds it just imposible to feed one at a time but I did send my birds dead ones that it to get looked at and as I knew it came back as gape worms x 4. so I got lucky and found this stuff. safeguard swine wormer 1.8% fenbendazole and its medicated also . I got it through Entirely pets.com under swine wormer. 10 lb pale it takes 3 to 10 days but I loaded the feed I was giving them up with two big scoops and that also stopped any picking I would guess the worms drove them mad.

 

[casportpony]

Sorry for your loss.

-Kathy