Is this colibacillosis?

[Poultry Master]

I have a hen that has been standing around with her head drawn in and her eyes closed also her face is quite pale. The hen is about 1 to 1 1/2 years old and recently hatched a brood of chicks.

The red one is the one that is sick I posted the other pic for comparison purposes.

The reason I ask is because I have lost two birds before to what I think was colibacillosis but I am not sure so any advise would be very much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[dlhunicorn]

Brooding is really hard on a bird... they often dont drink/eat sufficiently become weak and are indeed more liable to fall ill...
keep her and her chickies separated in a CLEAN environment and offer free choice live culture yogurt (you will notice that she will pig out on this more than likely) and give her four drops of polyvisol in beak once a day for a week and taper off the next. Offer her a bit of cooked egg yolk and some sunflower hearts as treat from your hand ...

 

[hinkjc]

Broodies also tend to get infested with mites/lice since they don't take time to dust. That can also cause paleness. Broodies naturally get paler the longer they sit, as their body is using up reserves. If you dont' intend for her to hatch anything, I would encourage her to leave the nest so she can rebuild her stength.

 

[Poultry Master]

Well actually the chicks are about ten weeks old so I guess it wasn't that recently.

 

[Poultry Master]

When I went out this morning I found some poo on her feathers it looked like diarrhea.

I also took a better pic of her.

 

[pips&peeps]

The only way to tell for sure is to get a swab of her eye, mouth and a fecal and send it in to WADDL for testing.

 

[Poultry Master]

I have heard that amoxicillin can be used as a cure is this true?

 

[pips&peeps]

You don't know what the bird has. So, throwing antibiotics at her is not the answer.

Most chicken viruses stay with the bird for life and are transmitted to healthy birds. Please find out what is wrong with the bird.

 

[threehorses]

PoultryMaster... you're really asking us to make a diagnosis that isn't possible on the input of data we have. The one sure thing I can tell you is that giving her antibiotics not knowing what she has will certainly make her dairrhea worse.

Could you please answer the questions on the 2nd stick in this forum? Answer them within this thread so we can get an idea of her history, of your flock history. Please add anything else you can about her environment, including any sources of water other than her waterer (ponds, puddles, etc), if you have any compost piles around, if you have other chickens, if you've added new stock lately, etc etc. Absolutely everything we could want to know or wouldn't want to know about your flock.

Also, please examine her carefully all over (particularly under her wings under the feathers, behind the neck, look for white tiny very tiny eggs on her feathers, feather shafts, etc). Feel her weight - her breast bone, the "keel bone" and tell us if she's sharply boned there. Any breathing issues, swelling of the face? Probably no to the latter, but it must be ruled out.. Please tell us your findings -they're very important.

Definitely she needs some yogurt right now to help with her diarrhea - to help replace the good bacteria of the gut. Good bacteria help to ward against bad bacterial infections by literally competing with the bad for the same space. Her good bacteria are obvioiusly compromised to replace them. She should get 1 teaspoon of plain yogurt daily. Also she might be dehydrated because of her diarrhea - please consider using electrolytes in her water. You can use gatorade today in a pinch, then chicken electrolytes in her water tomorrow. Give her both electrolyte water and regular water.

Put her up by herself in a place where you can watch her droppings. Clean them off her rear and dry it off. Baby powder is good for that, just like in babies, to keep them from getting sores. Also flies will be attracted to her vent and lay eggs there if droppings remain there. Some flies, screwworm flies, can actually eat living flesh so keep that area clean and dry.

She must eat - you must give her nutrition as she's too ill to do it on her own, including her feed. She might not have the energy to just as we don't feel like eating when we're ill. So make a little wet mash out of her crumbles or pellets. Put them in the blender to make them crumbles - they're more readily accepted that way. Get a half cup of water, mix the white yogurt in it - go ahead and use 2 tablespoons to make sure she gets one teaspoon out of it. Mix the water and yogurt (or gatorade and yogurt - or even pedialyte and yogurt). Use that to wet a very small amount of crumbles. Let it sit til it absorbs. Then you'll give her a 'wet mash" that will be only so wet that you can ball it up but that it falls apart into pieces, not a "glop" if you drop it in the bowl.

You can also give her a boiled mashed egg yolk, but until you rule out coccidiosis I wouldn't.

You should go by the feedstore and buy a bottle of Sulmet. I say sulmet because it's less likely that she has coccidiosis than it is that she has at least a secondary case of E. coli. Don't use the product until you talk to us. Also buy a thing of Wazine (piperazine 17%) to have on hand. It's possible that if the green droppings are frothy and you don't worm at least twice a year that she's wormy - but until we have the flock history, we really don't know yet.

By the way, did you do any of dlhunicorn's suggestions? They're right on the money.

I'll be looking for your reply.