Hen with acute respiratory distress—help please!

[HorseGirlAbby]

@azygous is there anything I can give her to make her better able to breathe? She’s pretty bad today. She kind of goes a few days where she can breathe really well, then some where she has trouble, then she’s better… I never renewed the anti-inflammatory, but honestly, she breathed about as well with it as without it. The antibiotic should have killed the infection, right? So all she has to do is get rid of the mucous. Her color’s still good, and she’s eating and drinking well, as active as normal. She just won’t stop coughing.

 

[azygous]

A vaporizer can help if you have one. A little peppermint oil in the water can ease the coughing. It's not a cure, but it can make it easier on her.

 

[HorseGirlAbby]

A vaporizer can help if you have one. A little peppermint oil in the water can ease the coughing. It's not a cure, but it can make it easier on her.

Yeah, probably not getting one of those anytime soon, unfortunately. She was doing so much better today, though. It’s really weird how the symptoms come and go. Maybe it has to do with the humidity. It’s been quite dry lately, but it was cloudy and pretty humid today, and maybe that helped. She got up into a nesting box, and I thought she might lay an egg, but she didn’t. She hasn’t laid ever since we took her to the vet that first time, which isn’t really surprising. She’s been pretty stressed lately.

 

[HorseGirlAbby]

@azygous I decided to do one more update. She hasn't made that noise in almost two weeks now, and is laying eggs again. She does seem to have trouble panting, I'm guessing the mucous is still hanging around a little. But she's quite heat hardy, and isn't having any problems. I'm cautiously optimistic that we may be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel...

 

[HorseGirlAbby]

So, I recently found out the girls have worms. I’m planning on worming them tomorrow, but do you think that could have started all this? Like the worms might have exacerbated the respiratory infection and caused her to start displaying symptoms? She hasn’t been bad lately, but is worse on the days she lays an egg or is stressed in some way, like the heat.