Now two chickens gasping. Please help! Video.

[ladywolf]

First tube feeding done. I was nervous but all the threads were right, I could feel the tube in the crop. I only gave her 15ml of ground up layer pellets gruel with vitamins in it. Her crop is not full but I can feel it now. I figured a little at a time so as not to overwhelm. I do not know if chickens can get something similar to re-feeding syndrome in horses?

In any case I did not want to overwhelm her digestive tract. Fingers crossed, pleading with The Powers That Be done and Reiki 'till my hands felt like they were on fire...

 

[ladywolf]

This just came in the mail today.

In it is this:




-Kathy

Disclaimer: Not saying that I think either bird has gapes, nor what the proper treatment is, just wanted to share what I just saw and read.

I believe we have that book or a similar one at work. Never even thought to check it for chicken parasite egg/larva/ identification! I may have to run a fecal...

 

[casportpony]

Maybe look at a poop and a throat swab, too, rule out bacterial and yeast infections?

-Kathy

 

[ladywolf]

Oi! We have chicken lice too! When will it end! Is it safe to treat for that while chickies are so sick?

 

[ladywolf]

Maybe look at a poop and a throat swab, too, rule out bacterial and yeast infections?

-Kathy

I will get some swabs from work on Monday, assuming my girls are still alive. So discouraged right now...

 

[roostersandhens]

I hope they are ok!

 

[pwand]

Oi! We have chicken lice too! When will it end! Is it safe to treat for that while chickies are so sick?

Yes, treat them now. It can be part of their problem.

 

[casportpony]

That is *always* one of the first things I do.

• Thorough exam, which includes gloved, lubed finger in vent.
• Dust for mites and lice even if I cannot see any, but only if stable enough that handling them won't kill them.
• Weigh daily.
• Place in box or crate inside warm house.
• Worm at 50mg/kg ,but only if stable enough that handling them won't kill them.
• Tube water if dehydrated, then tube food if thin.

-Kathy

 

[aggiemae]

A few days ago Kathy (carportpony) suggested I treat my hen for mites and she was right because it turned out that the hen was infested with teenie (almost microscopic) black mites that we found only because they had fallen onto white paper towels. They free range and there are lots of wild birds in the foraging area but I though I had it covered with visual inspection. I never knew that mites could be this damaging but Elizabeak was pretty sick, too sick to even shake off the Seiven, but later in the day she jumped the baby gate that we were using to keep her in the bathroom! dust I could/should have heeded her advice.

 

[rbaker0345]

If you're a vet tech, do a fecal. Its the cheapest, fastest way to rule out like a hundred possiblities. Chickens have such extensive air sacs throughout their bodies that sometimes GI parasites can cause UR symptoms. I would also do a nasopharyngeal swab. Take the swab and then lay it on the slide and drop a couple of drops of fecasol onto it then rub the swab all around in the saline and place a cover glass. Look for spirochetes, candida or aspergillus. Yeast in chickens respiratory systems doesn't look like the mickey mouse budding yeasts that you see in a dog's ear, they're ovoid with small round buds or long hyphae coming out of them. You may see just the cells or just the budding cells or all three structures. If there's anything you can't identify, take a picture of it through the microscope lens with your digital camera or with your cell phone camera. Its a little hard and takes some practice but you can take some good pics of what you see in the scope with a small camera or phone camera. Then you can upload them onto this thread and maybe we can all put our heads together and figure out what they have. If you have long, sterile swabs (you know, the kind with the wooden handles), you can take a tracheal swab. Look at Kathy's pics of the chicken trachea and try to get the swab into the trachea, not too far down, that can get you a good sample of apergillus if its present.

From the symptoms and the conditions you were talking about, I would really look for aspergillus.