Lethargic, Panting, and Weak Rooster

[rebrascora]

Good to hear that the sling/hammock is making him comfortable and he is accepting it. Do encourage him to walk a little each day out of the sling and give him a target to move towards..... like putting him outside a short distance away from the girls' pen and letting him make his way towards them. Regular short, focussed exercise like that may help him to re coordinate his legs over time. Vitamin B will benefit him regardless of the cause of neurological problem... ie Marek's, toxin or even liver issues. It is water soluble so any excess can be excreted and the body has a reasonably high tolerance level for it. I don't know much about selenium, so can't advise on that. Active charcoal was something that I was about to suggest if toxins were the issue. The important thing is not to put him off his food by adding things that he doesn't like, so try it and if he won't eat it, don't persist, but go back to what he is enjoying. It just stresses you and him, trying to get stuff into him that he doesn't want.... I've been there!
Don't worry too much about him drinking water if his food is sloppy. They don't generally need it if they are getting it in their food. Dry food requires them to drink in order to digest it, hens laying eggs need plenty of water because eggs are made up of quite a lot of water, in hot weather they drink more to cool down but if your guy is getting water in his food and is not too hot, I would not be concerned about how much he drinks or doesn't, as long as he has access to water if he wants it.
Good luck with him

Barbara

 

[azygous]

As Barbara stated, the B vitamins are harmless, and are nutrients your rooster gets in the food he eats. Like vitamin C and some others, any excess the body doesn't utilize is secreted out in the urine, so there's no danger of it reaching toxic levels from having too much.

The selenium is a trace mineral present in the soil. Your rooster eats it all the time. It can be toxic, but he'd have to consume pounds of it.

The activated charcoal is an inert substance, and it has the remarkable and life saving properties of saving a life when poison has been consumed. I am the beneficiary of it myself. Long ago I had eaten something deadly poisonous, and I was having a violent reaction from it. I remembered the Universal Antidote of burnt toast, black tea and milk of magnesia and mixed some up and drank it and it saved my life.

The activated charcoal in the burnt toast absorbed the poison in my system. The tannin in the tea and the milk of magnesia neutralized the poison rendering it harmless. If you can't locate some charcoal from a pharmacy, try popping a slice of bread in your toaster and letting it burn to a crisp, nice and black. (Open all your windows or plug the toaster into an outside outlet so the smoke won't fill the house.

Then scrape the burnt part of the toast into your roosters food and feed it to him. The charcoal will start to absorb any poison in his body. The B vitamins will help restore what the toxin has depleted from his system, and the selenium will help restore neurological connections from his brain to his nerves governing his motor system (muscles) so he can walk again.

None of this is toxic. In fact it's all anti-toxic and it's why I'm suggesting it.

If a neuro toxin is not responsible for your rooster's condition, none of these things can possibly harm him.

This also has the benefit of diagnosing your rooster. If it restores his ability to walk, then we know he has consumed a neuro toxin.

 

[Rose Connor]

While we are looking for the vitamins that are needed, we decided to take him out to see his girls. He was okay for a minute or two, but then he started repeatedly kicking his back legs, falling out of his hammock. Upon being picked up, it could be heard that his breathing was raspy. It took a two minutes or so before he calmed down and stopped kicking with his legs, but it definitely wasn't the type of struggle he normally does when wanting to get out of our grasp. He wasn't kicking at us or the ground specifically, he was just moving his legs.

I don't think we will be comfortable taking him back out to his girls for a while.