my chickens have avian poxs

[tulie13]

Quote:
If they aren't "easily handled", and it might cause more harm than good to catch them to try to put iodine on them (CERTAIN stress vs. POSSIBILITY of infection), I would just keep an eye on them and give them whatever you can to boost their general health and immune systems. Some high protein treat like yogurt, which also contains probiotics, can be good. Plus if you have any chicken vitamins/electrolytes you can add some of this to their water for a little boost. Sometimes they don't like the taste when you mess with their water, so if you have a powder vitamin you could add some to some yogurt and they will probably eat it.

 

[elmo]

I have one chicken with dry pox now, and just got back from the vet. If you can isolate the affected birds, it lessens the possibility that other chickens might peck at the scabs (either on the bird or off, on the ground), and by swallowing the scabs (yuck) get lesions in their throats (the dreaded wet pox).

It's not practical, of course, if you have a lot of birds already affected at the same time, but if you have only one or two, it's certainly something to think about.

 

[YonkFarm]

The Avian Pox have gone through my whole flock (25 chickens) and there is still one rooster who looks a little ragged, but thankfully none of them got the wet pox. They first appeared in August. Out of my flock of 25, 12 of them are extra roos. They are now 25 weeks old. I've been trying to find someone to butcher them for me, with no luck so far. I really don't want to do it and I'm not set up to do it yet. I called my county extension agent, who contacted UNL and a university in PA about eating the meat from the birds. They both said that as long as it was dry pox only, the meat was ok to eat. So I'm wondering if they can have wet pox that goes unnoticed??? We've been eating the eggs that started appearing about 3 weeks ago, right on schedule even though it's been colder than normal here. The "experts" at both universities also said I should destroy the whole flock and start over!!! I have no intention of doing that, and I wondered if anyone else has been told this. By the way, we just built the coop the birds are in on a farm where there has never been chickens before.

I did elect not to treat the birds with iodine, etc. as they were not used to being handled and I didn't want to do anything to increase their stress. Also, with the size of my flock, time was an issue so I decided to just put probiotics in their water and feed them yogurt with mash and occasionally some cod liver oil on top. They loved it! I'm so thankful they made it through this ok.

As a side note, I DID have to learn how to handle them (and it's getting easier all the time for them as well as me) as they have now started pecking the tail feathers (blood feathers?) of each other......I've found the duct tape trick works wonderfully!

Thanks for reading my ramblings

Brenda