New and need help! sneezing, labored breathing and white spots on ear lobes

[Ecoria]

Saturday we went and bought our first chickens. We got 7 sex link hens, all about a year old. yesterday i noticed one of them was making a snoring sound and a few sneezes or coughs. today 2 more have runny noses and are making the sounds and one of those has white spots on her ear lobes. None of this was happening when we got them. Please help!

 

[Minchi]

Try some apple cider vinegar (1TBS in 1 pint of water) tonight and pick up some Duramycin-10 as soon as you can. You might give them some Greek yogurt mixed with feed for a few days. If they do not improve you might look for some other antibiotics but that one is made for respiratory issues.

Note: Apple Cider Vinegar is a just in case it has beneficial properties, a lot of people stand by the product so I recommend it as a cover your *** treatment.

 

[Ecoria]

Thank you, I will try that. How long should it be before I see improvement or worry that it's not getting better?

 

[dawg53]

It sounds like you bought chickens with some type of respiratory disease. Sometimes infected birds when stressed (such as a move to a new place/area) will bring out symptoms of whatever disease it is. The fact that you observed two more birds with runny noses and other symptoms indicates a respiratory disease because it's spreading and/or the stress of the move activated the symptoms. In other words, the birds were sick before you bought them.
Here's a link to respiratory diseases. Possible diseases they may have could be Infectious Bronchitis (IBV,) Mycoplasma Gallisepticum (MG,) or Coryza. Coryza infected birds exude a foul odor about the head area.
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/ps044
To determine what you're dealing with, bloodwork or a necropsy can be done. You can contact your local extension office or call your state agriculture department and find out how to go about doing this.
Otherwise, I recommend that you cull your sick birds. There are treatments for sick birds with respiratory diseases, but no cures. Surviving birds remain carriers and will infect newly introduced birds to a flock.

 

[Ecoria]

Heres a stupid question...we were building the coop and they were hanging out near us for much of it. Could it just be from the sawdust? I didn't even think about that until I read something about keeping dust down.

Also, 2 have iridescent powdery looking spots on their ear lobes. Searching has not been helpful.:/

 

[janinepeters]

Heres a stupid question...we were building the coop and they were hanging out near us for much of it. Could it just be from the sawdust? I didn't even think about that until I read something about keeping dust down.
Also, 2 have iridescent powdery looking spots on their ear lobes. Searching has not been helpful.

In humans, saw dust can cause lung diseases, such as asthma and even cancer, so it is possible that sawdust caused the symptoms you've observed in your birds. I don't believe anyone has studied the effects of high exposure to saw dust on chickens, but because of its known impact on human health, I am fastidious about keeping the dust level down in our coop.

 

[janinepeters]

Also, I would wait a few weeks before culling. I've had mild respiratory symptoms run through my flock before, but usually the chickens recover fully, or nearly so, and have had few problems with emergence of disease among chickens that I later add to the flock. I think chickens get a lot of mild upper respiratory illnesses, just like people do.