Hen ill after deworming with valbazen - Update: she died, did necropsy

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Thank you. My husband wasn't able to make it home last night, but will be home tonight and we will perfrom our partial necropsy then. I will post the results afterwards. Along with checking her intestines for worms, I will also see if I can find anything out of the ordinary - eggwise. She hadn't started laying again, since molting.

While checking the other chickens' poops yesterday and finding many of them clear, I did find some more poops with tapeworm eggs. Today, I found another and while staring at it, saw 2 of them move. Some look almost sperm or tadpole like. Wider at one end, with a possible tail. Is this normal? I'm freaked out that they are still alive and can be reingested (I did pick up the poops I found like that, but I'm sure there are many, many more I"m missing).

I know I gave the hens enough medicine, since I accidentally gave them double the dosage. I was expecting to find all kinds of dead worms being eliminated after deworming, not live eggs. So far, I've only found dead 3 roundworms total and nothing else but the eggs.
 
My heart goes out to you - I have just read through the thread and you did all that any one of us could do - hope you find the outcome to what was wrong with her.

Suzie
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So sorry for your loss. Some chickens are just weaker, or just aren't able to handle stress as well. You did your best, and that's what counts. I have a girl that won't make it to morning. I treated the flock this past weekend with piperazine for a bad roundworm infestation and she was the one showing the worst symptoms. She simply isn't going to make it. Nothing in life is guaranteed. Hugs to you.
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I'm so sorry for your loss. My Egyptian Fayoumis all had a weird reaction to ivermectin. They had seizures and two were comatose. One was comatose for two days and at several points I thought for sure she was actually dead. I still can't believe she made it and that they are now laying every day, only a month or so after it happened.
 
The necropsy was much harder than I thought it would be. There were no eggs in her body, so at least I can rule out being eggbound as the cause of death. I didn't see any worm infestation either.

My unprofessional, unexperienced, necropsy results:


The inside of her crop looked normal - still had feed waiting to be digested. The gizzard also looked normal and had feed, along with pebbles in it. There were no eggs in her body. I noticed white liquid down in her clocoa (looking at it from the inside cavity).

I'm not sure how much fat there should be and where it should be located on a chicken. The BPR had a thin layer of fat near the skin and a lot of pockets of fat in certain areas (near her rear end especially).

After removing the organs and taking a picture of them, I pulled out the pile of intestines so that I could look for worms. The intestines were almost impossible to separate and straighten out like you see in online pics. I finally gave up and cut into them while they were still together. I only found 1 round worm and that was found inside what might be one of the ceca - there could have been a few more somewhere, but not an infestation.

We did find 2 separate earthworm looking things, but are assuming they must be the ceca. I expected the ceca to be attached to an intestine -- these 2 things seemed to be unattached to anything - both ends of each one were free, yet they were bound up in the mess of intestines. One was about 9 inches long and the other was 3-4 inches long. I slit it open and there was a little light green liquid on one end, along with tiny white things (Tapeworm eggs?). On the other side, about 2 inches from the end, there was a dark green, thick material (I took a pic). My impression was that it looked like a big earthworm, but it was not flat or segmented, so it couldn't be a tapeworm. Was this the ceca?


I'm posting pics on another thread, so that you don't have to look if you don't want to. The pics are graphic and gross.

Edited to add the link to the Necropsy pics:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=7897191#p7897191
 
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Quote:
I did not dilute with water. The first 4-5 hens had straight valbazen on bread and the BPR that died was one of the first few that received her dose on bread. I then gave up on the bread, since they weren't all eating the entire piece of bread, and gave the rest of the chickens their dose in their mouths.
 
Thanks. I'll think long and hard about using any wormer. For twenty five years I've never used it with no problems, first time I wormed and look what happened!
Quote:

Tracy - I'm glad your chickens made it through!


Mommissan - I'm sorry to hear your hen is not going to make it either
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