Mysterious Chick Deaths... :(

[phoenixbantam]

I am new to raising chicks, so I am a little frustrated by this...

My chicks range from several weeks old to almost 2 months old, I buy them and they start out fine, then gradually start fluffing up but still act normal and eat normally, then they will lose interest in food, then they die.

I woke up one morning and my silver laced polish bantam chick was laying down collapsed almost dead, I fed him some water and egg yolk and smushed crumble with a syringe, by the end of the day he was standing and peeping again and eating food on his own. I checked on him before I went to bed, the next morning he was dead.

Several other chicks had already died as well.

I found they were completely INFESTED with lice (ewwwwww) so I treated them with DE and pyrethin(sp?) dust, which seemed to work for the lice, but they are still acting odd even though I can't find anymore lice on them.

My 2 month old gold laced polish chick walks around with her wings dragging and is always slightly fluffed up and holds her wings away from her body. She has been like this for weeks, and now one of my red golden pheasant chicks is doing it too.

What am I doing wrong? They are kept warm and have food and water but I am obviously missing something. I have lost about half my chicks already

 

[purpletree23]

I'm very sorry for your loss. Chickens can be as frustrating as they are loveable.

It seems to me from reading your post that you are adding chicks every now and then or did you get them all at the same time? Getting chicks from different flocks at different times is not good. They pass diseases to one another very easily. The chicks with lice could be dying from the loss of blood.

Where are they being housed? What kind of food are they eating? What temp is it? What is the weather like outside?

I'll check back with you in a bit.

Justine

 

[threehorses]

Although I'm very sorry for your loss of your precious babies (always heartbreaking), I'm very glad you chose to bring this up on this board. Lice and mites are very quickly devestating to poultry, even babies! Maybe especially babies. It's very easy for wild birds to bring them in, or blooms to happen just when eggs hatch.

You did the right course of action of treating them with a dust. In older birds, you can dust and use ivermectin drop on as well to quick-kill the mites/lice (except feather lice which eat feather proteins only - don't take blood).

DE inbetween is used to help prevent them. But thanks to wild birds, we should always monitor the birds for lice that the DE don't get and treat immediately when we see them.

What's going on with your babies is in the last anemia. You killed the lice making them anemic, but they must have a very strong nutritional follow up to build up their blood.

For all ages of birds, I will use baby crumbles or grower feed, yogurt, boiled egg yolks, unsweetened applesauce or babyfood applesauce, and OACV (organic apple cider vinegar) laced water to make a mash. The mash ranges from barely moist to like applesauce, depending on what my birds like. (They like drier.)

EGGS: The mashed egg yolks are full of various nutrients and fats. They're a miracle food for birds. I boil rather than scramble because boiled eggs fall apart easily in liquid. Scrambled do not.

YOGURT: The yogurt (plain, please) has living bacteria that are beneficial to birds as their digestive tracts are lined with the same. Bacteria literally are the workers that feed your bird. Any time of stress requires replacement of some of the work staff as they "quit".

The only time I don't use yogurt is during treatment with -cycline or -mycin antibiotics for which dairy products are contraindicated.

APPLESAUCE: Apple pectin acts as a pre-biotic. In other words, it feeds the bacteria of the gut and encourage them to colonize the gut, crowding out bad bacteria. The pH of applesauce also is friendly to good bacteria and unfriendly to bad. And birds love it - so you can get them to eat almost anything with a combination of eggs and applesauce.

OACV: Organic because it's produced by bacteria, not chemicals. The bacteria are put back in there as 'the mother' and, like yogurt, are necessary for the bird. They produce enzymes that help digestion, vitamin B for all sorts of health reasons, and also chemicals that ward off bad bacteria. The pH of OACV at 1 ounce per gallon of drinking water helps readjust the pH of the gut to be healthy again.

BABY CRUMBLES: they're balanced in nutrition, richer than usual crumbles, and contain a little amprolium just in case. If I don't have any on hand, I use my usual crumbles.

In these babies, I'd honestly consider using some baby vitamins (without added iron) as the other users recommend. But I think the above mixture can help with the egg. I would not recommend a packaged vitamin/mineral package for poultry.

By the way, know that you'll have to retreat once or twice when the eggs from the lice rehatch.

 

[birdlover]

Three horses,

How wonderfully informative your post is! I'm sure there will be many who will learn from it. Thanks!!

 

[threehorses]

Quote:
Thank you! Somebody has to learn from all my years of trials and errors. /wink Otherwise, why go through them.