Lethargic, Bloated chicken with foamy, yellow poop - help!

[Betsy G.]

Hello all,

I am new to this site, so please excuse me if I'm asking a question that has been answered elsewhere. We have a good-sized broiler flock of Freedom Ranger chickens that are 5 weeks old. DH informed me tonight that one of our birds is lethargic & bloated (but has really skinny legs) and has yellow, foamy poop.

A couple of online searches have brought me to the conclusion that she has "blackhead" and that it can be treated with cayenne pepper in the food and water. Does this sound right? Have any of you had any experience with something like this? Also, should we isolate her until she's doing better?

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated, as we are very new to the joys of chickens!

Thank you!
Betsy

 

[emtoothfxr]

We had a chicken that was egg-bound with that appearance. She was bearing down a lot, only able to excrete a portion of waste and accumulating a lot of white/yellow matter around her vent. She was very lethargic and often closing her eyes for brief moments.

Also, we did have to separate her because the others picked at her backend and she bled.

 

[Turken Lover9847]

I wish I could help you but I have never heard of this before . Tell your chicken to " Get well soon " !!!

 

[dawg53]

Betsy G. :

Hello all,

I am new to this site, so please excuse me if I'm asking a question that has been answered elsewhere. We have a good-sized broiler flock of Freedom Ranger chickens that are 5 weeks old. DH informed me tonight that one of our birds is lethargic & bloated (but has really skinny legs) and has yellow, foamy poop.

A couple of online searches have brought me to the conclusion that she has "blackhead" and that it can be treated with cayenne pepper in the food and water. Does this sound right? Have any of you had any experience with something like this? Also, should we isolate her until she's doing better?

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated, as we are very new to the joys of chickens!

Thank you!
Betsy

Blackhead is caused by a protozoa carried by cecal worms. Cayenne pepper is useless against protozoa, it might be a preventative for worms, but not a treatment. Treatment for blackhead is metronidazole. It can be purchased online as fishzole (metronidazole.) Dosage is one 250ml pill a day for 7 days. After treating for blackhead, you need to worm your 5 week old chicks to kill the cecal worms. There are 2 wormers that I recommend: Valbazen liquid cattle/sheep wormer...dosage is given orally 1/4cc for your chicks. The other wormer is safeguard liquid goat wormer...dosage is given orally 1/4cc for your chicks. You must redose them again in 10 days. You can purchase either of these wormers from Jefferslivestock.com or you can call them.​