How to t feed a sick chicken and give subcutaneous fluid

[kuntrygirl]

Get yourself a tube and just stick it in a healty chicken, once you see how easy it is, try giving that chicken a feeding, but only if the crop is empty, lol. Did you know that different birds have different shaped crops? -Kathy

Uh, still scared to stick it in a healthy chicken. Didn't know about the different shaped crops. But not surprised that you knew this.

 

[casportpony]

Just a bump to encourage more to try tubefeeding... To date, post number one is probably one of the best I have ever seen.

-Kathy

 

[SaraT]

Anyone ever tube feed for a while and have trouble getting the chicken to eat and drink again?

My hen was injured either by a raccoon or just traumatized herself running around the enclosure from raccoons. I started tube feeding and giving SQ fluids two weeks ago. She has steadily improved, and although she's still a little quiet, she's basically acting pretty normal. The only thing weird she's been doing is stretching her neck out and opening her mouth. I was wondering if her esophagus has become irritated from being tubed so much? I was tubing her up to 3 times/day at one point. (She's had watery poop and I've been having trouble keeping up with her fluid loss.) Anyway, I started her on sucralfate yesterday in hopes of healing any ulcerations and I think she may have eaten a little today. I can't be sure because I had her in with the other chickens this morning and she lost weight over the course of the morning, but she did seem to have some food in her crop.

This is getting really frustrating because I've invested so much time to this point, I've offered her many different choices of food and she's improved, but if she doesn't start eating well sometime very soon I'm going to have to euthanize her! Any thoughts?

 

[casportpony]

It's possible that she has a bacterial or fungal infection in her throat. Long story short, I have a rooster that can't walk and knocks over his water and food dishes, so I've been tubing him for months trying to get up the courage to euthanize him. I've tubed many and never had a problem from it, but I guess it's possible.

If she still has watery poop, I suspect she has an infection and that your tubing has nothing to with her neck. Was she on any antibiotics after the attack?

-Kathy

 

[SaraT]

She was on Tylosin for 7 days. For like half a day she made a raspy breathing noise. She also had a swollen face and blood crusted around her ear. I never found an actual wound. Oh and lots of feathers missing.

She's been getting some sort of probiotic the whole time. First I used kefir, then I switched to a chicken probiotic. There are also probiotics in the Kaytee hand feeding food I've been using. The last few times I've used an ACV/water mix to treat a mild candida infection just in case, but her crop empties fine.

The watery poop actually looks mainly like the poop from a hot chicken or the poop from a hen not eating in this link: http://chat.allotment.org/index.php?topic=17568.0 So not terribly abnormal, it's just when she started I had to double her fluids.

When I stopped the tylosin, it was actually recommended by a vet (who didn't actually see her) to switch her to oxytet, but I stopped to see if she would start eating when off of antibiotics. She continued to slowly improve, so I didn't put her back on antibiotics.

She's gone from 2380g, to barely keeping her at 2200g the last few days.

We'll see, I'm just hoping and praying she has drank at least a little by the time I get home from work tonight. I even put a light on a timer by her cage so she has a little more light and maybe stays awake a little longer. (The room has a window, but not much evening sunlight.)

 

[casportpony]

If all of her poop looks like that, it's very abnormal, trust me. That page has probably killed many chickens from people looking at it and thinking their poop is "normal".

Has she been wormed recently?

-Kathy

 

[SaraT]

I did give her a pea sized amount of fenbendazole (panacur paste for horses) after I found a round worm in her poop last week. I should probably deworm her again since I came up with a better estimate for the amount to give her. (I came up with 12.5mg of fenbendazole per 0.1mls paste.)

Would you treat with any antibiotics?

Thanks.

 

[casportpony]

If she were mine, I would worm her at 50mg/kg once or 20mg/kg three days in a row. 50mg/kg is what my vet told me to use, but I recently read an abstract that showed worming at 20mg/kg three days in a row was very effective.





-Kathy

 

[casportpony]

Here's the abstract on 20mg/kg for three days. FWIW, I've actually used as much as 50mg/kg for five days and I've seen no side effects.

Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6750887
Efficacy of fenbendazole against helminth parasites of poultry in Uganda.

Ssenyonga GS.
Abstract

Fenbendazole 4% (Panacur, Hoechst) administered in feed was used to treat chickens infected with Ascaridia galli, Heterakis gallinarum and Railletina spp. It was also used to treat Syngamus trachea in broiler birds. There was a marked drop in helminth egg counts in the faeces on the second day of treatment and the faeces became negative by the seventh day after the last treatment. Post-mortem examination 15 to 21 days later showed that the drug was 100% effective against Ascaridia galli and Heterakis gallinarum at 10 mg/kg. However, for complete removal of Railletina spp. 15 mg/kg was required. Similarly 20 mg/kg fenbendazole was effective against Syngamus trachea. It was concluded that fenbendazole is suitable for the treatment of the important intestinal and tracheal worms of poultry, a dose of 15 to 20 mg/kg for 3 consecutive days being recommended for use under field conditions.


-Kathy

 

[casportpony]

From a thread that I started:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/744734/worming-with-horse-wormer

I've read about people using horse wormer to worm their birds, but I've always wondered how much Safeguard/Panaur (Fenbendazole) paste one would use. So i decided to do some weighing and math. As it turns out, you would give the same amount of paste as you would the liquid. For example, if you usually give a bird one cc of the liquid, you would give one cc of the paste.

This is applies to Fenbendazole only, not Ivermectin and it's probably only useful to those that worm by mouth as I don't know if the paste would mix properly in the water.

Let me know if this is not clear enough since I seem to have trouble writing what I mean, lol. I'll post pictures later, that might make it easier to understand.

Quote:
This is why it's important to understand how much your bird weighs and how many mg/kg your bird should get. Giving too little worming medication can cause resistance to wormers. Do you have any idea how many mg's of wormer are in a "pea size" amount? Well I was curious, so I measured it.

From left to right:
Small = 10mg ( .1cc) = enough for a 200 gram (7 ounce) bird at 50mg/kg
Medium = 25mg (.25cc) = enough for a 500 gram (17 ounce) bird at 50mg/kg
Large = 50mg ( .5cc) = enough for a 1000 gram (35 ounce) bird at 50mg/kg
50 mg/kg is at the high end of the recommended dose for birds, but it is what my vets recommended.

-Kathy