hen with worms and fever

[chickens~galore]

I have a brown leghorn female that i am pretty sure has worms. She is really skinny. Barely eats anything. She also acts like she is feverish. She stands around with her mouth open panting and her wings are spread out. Her comb is also shrinking and is still red but becoming a little pale. Her eyes are very bright and healthy looking. No ruffled feathers either or droopy tale. I have been medicating her with piperzine plus i put some vitamins in also. My question is does she really have worms or is it something else? What else can i do for her?

 

[Judy]

More info needed:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=3569

Piperazine only treats roundworms.

 

[JennsPeeps]

Check her for signs of cocci, too.

Give her some high calorie food, like meats & cheeses. She needs vitamins & nutrients asap.

Have you looked at her feces to determine what type of worm she may have?

 

[threehorses]

The panting is probably heat, and stress. As for worms, when was she last wormed? Only way anyone can tell you for sure is if you have a fecal egg count done. Otherwise you just have to treat symptomatically.

Also, you need to rule out mites. They can take the weight of a bird down quickly.

As for her temperature, birds have a very high temperature naturally because they have a very high metabolism. Actually birds don't get overall fevers. They get localized heat. So again I'm thinking hot weather because of her wings and panting. Is there plenty of shade for her? I like to spritz water on leaves overhanging my barnyard, wet the ground a bit in a corner where it's always shady - morning through night. If you can, m ake an area like that. If an area never has sun hit it, it tends to stay cooler. Spritz water on the leaves and ground and you have a sort of air conditioner.

Let's hear abotu her diet. Incidentally, I would not recommend meats and cheeses. I'd like to hear what she is eating however and go from there. The vitamins should be in her food normally, but she's emaciated so vitamins and electrolytes (if kept cool and out of the sun) won't hurt. Otherwise, you're just throwing money away and making a place for bacteria to grow in their water.

Also, worms don't necessarily show up (visably) in their feces. Often they only show up there in cases of a very very heavy parasite load. I'd venture to say that 99% of cases of worms you'll never see a worm in the poop - unless you have floating solution and a microscope like a vet.

So usually people worm a healthy flock preventatively. If you haven't wormed in a while, start with piperazine 17 (aka Wazine 17) because it only kills roundworms, the most prevalent worms in the barnyard. You don't want to kill them all (and indeed wazine won't kill them in one run). You want to knock the population back so that the bird doesn't have problems with the dead worms leaving its body. THEN go back in 6 weeks and reworm with wazine or better yet ivermectin.

Technically you could do that, but I'd like to hear more about her droppings first - a very descriptive description of them, please. Do this for us, and we'll help you as well as we can.

Oh almost forgot - you could give her 1/2 teaspoon of yogurt in some wetted crumbles. Mine love applesauce to wet the crumbles and the pectin is good for them. Also, instead of vitamins in the water, you could use 1 teaspoon of apple cider vinegar - organic only please - in her water as a combination probiotic/electrolyte. Add a crushed cooked egg yolk to that and I bet that she'll be more interested.

 

[chickens~galore]

Thank you all for your replies but unfortunately she didn't make it.

She died sometime last night.

I was feeding her regular chick/grower crumbles, she was in the shade 24/7 (she is penned up around a big tree), and her water contained vitamins, cocidiosis medication, and piperzine.

I never got a chance to see her droppings.

I still don't think the heat explains the panting. None of the other birds are doing it. Only her and she would be doing it at night when it is nice and cool.

hopefully next time i can figure it out. thanks again for the replies.

 

[threehorses]

I'm very sorry to hear that you lost her. Were you worming her when she presented with the symptoms, or was that what was in the water afterwards?

By the way, please never mix two substances in the water at once. Spread them out - too much for the body to handle otherwise.

 

[JennsPeeps]

So sorry to hear that you lost her. I lost a bird to cocci & roundworms in March. By the time we noticed symptoms, it was too late. Animals are veyr good at hiding symptoms of illness. You did the best you knew to do.