Official BYC Poll: Are You Comfortable Injecting Vaccines or Medications Into Your Birds?

[6BeachChicks]

I don’t vaccinate. On several occasions, I have had to give a chicken pain pills, and antibiotics that were in pill form. (All from a good chicken vet don’t worry) I feel good about it, but it’s easier with another person helping. I have had to syringe liquid food into the beak twice. Both for a month. One was for a broken beak, she couldn’t eat, or more specifically, grab stuff. I’m happy to say that she fully recovered. One was for a sick chicken, with coccidiosis, she lost her appetite. After a month, she was cured.

I know a lot of people don’t agree with doing this for a chicken, but my chickens are pets, and deserve the same respect as a dog or a cat.

 

[swamphiker]

I'm a bit disappointed with some of the judgmental responses here. People keep chickens for different reasons and therefore have different ideas about medical care for chickens.

Before getting chickens, we made the decision that we wouldn't be taking our chickens to the vet, but that we would go to reasonable lengths to provide care at home. We had a chicken get attacked by a possum and a vet friend recommended injecting IM antibiotics available at the feed store to prevent infection. Cheap, easy, and the chicken healed up and is still doing great!

 

[6BeachChicks]

I'm a bit disappointed with some of the judgmental responses here. People keep chickens for different reasons and therefore have different ideas about medical care for chickens.

Before getting chickens, we made the decision that we wouldn't be taking our chickens to the vet, but that we would go to reasonable lengths to provide care at home. We had a chicken get attacked by a possum and a vet friend recommended injecting IM antibiotics available at the feed store to prevent infection. Cheap, easy, and the chicken healed up and is still doing great!

I’m glad your chicken is all healed up!

 

[HKG]

I don't vaccinate my birds.

 

[Aunt Angus]

I probably would be ok with it if I needed to. I'd just watch some videos or ask the BYC community for help.

 

[CHlCKEN]

There isn't a "no" answer

Im wondering why

 

[casportpony]

I probably would be ok with it if I needed to. I'd just watch some videos or ask the BYC community for help.

This video is really good:
http://lafeber.com/vet/es/inyecciones-intramusculares-en-las-aves/

 

[casportpony]

There isn't a "no" answer

Im wondering why

Does that mean that neither of you are comfortable giving shots?

 

[casportpony]

I have until recently been fortunate and the chickens I've looked after have been by and large healthy and in an area of the world that rarely saw the killer diseases that can be so easily reduced in severity by vaccination.
It would be a shame if this thread turned into a pro or anti vaccination rant.
I'm going to concentrate on the "comfortable with injecting" part of the question.
There are numerous methods of introducing medication into a chickens bloodstream. I have favoured the make a solution and dip bits of bread into it and give to the chicken method in the past and more recently I've adminsitered worming and coccidiosis treatments by this method. I've been in the completely frustrated group at times in the past when a chicken has point blank refused to be even remotley cooperative and would not eat anything that I had carefully doctored with the medication. I've spent hours catching and then trying to treat the few complete nutters that kick off the moment you try to restrain them.
It has been times like this I wished thhe medication required came in an injectable form. A quick capture, a towel wrap and an injection would have saved me and the chicken from so much stress.
On a few occasions in the past the only option availible was an intramuscular injection of a particular drug. With the right syringe and needle and a basic understanding of a chickens physiology I found it less of a problem than my prefered "bits of bread" method.
There is less concern about whether the patient gets the correct dose. None of the chickens I've injected showed any diistress from the needle going in, or the pressure of the fluid goinng into the muscle.
So, while not an expert injector I've done it enough to realise the advantages of a needle and syringe and if every drug came in an injectible form my house would on occasions look like a junkies playground.

There another upside to giving injections vs orally, and that's that it has a better chance of getting into the bloodstream in those birds whose digestive tracts has slowed down.

 

[speckledhen]

I do not vaccinate my birds for anything, never have. And rarely do we ever use injectible (or any other) antibiotic, only for infections/wounds, but we have in the past and are fairly comfortable doing it.