Please - Desparate for help with sick cochins with poopy bottoms

[Scifisarah]

I just wanted to add an update to this for anyone finding themselves in a similar predicament. I treated twice with Safeguard, once and then again this past Tuesday which was 10 days after the initial treatment. I used between 0.6-0.7 cc equine paste per bird, given in a piece of bread for the females, and directly down the throat for the cockerels since they would not eat their paste-injected bread without tidbitting it forever. I believe several of my birds had hairworms/capillaria, but not all of them. It was probably a species of worm that required an intermediate host, otherwise I imagine the worms would be more widespread across my flock. Several of my birds still have the symptoms I first described, and they did not seem to be suffering from worms. I am treating everyone with Neomycin 325 (1/4 tsp powder per gallon water, changed daily for 5 days) to see if that improves the couple birds that are still having problems.

 

[Wol1]

Did the Neomycin help? I hope so. Poor things.

 

[Scifisarah]

Did the Neomycin help? I hope so. Poor things.

It did not, unfortunately. I took our ailing rooster Orion to a vet (finally found one that would see poultry) after three days of the neomycin and no improvement. The vet found a high number of protozoan activity, and sent me home with five days of Metronidazole. He only made it to day 3 before dying. I brought him to MSU for a necropsy by the college vet. He called yesterday evening and told me that the preliminary diagnosis is Gout and kidney damage caused by excessive calcium in the layer feed. He still has more tests to run to confirm that is what caused this and I will get a written report from him sometime next week so I made find out there were other complications. Today I switched all my groups over to an 18% protein Blue Seal Finish feed with lower calcium, and added dishes of oyster shell for the pullets and hens. I will also be adding Vitamin C powder to their drinking water to help flush the excess calcium from my rooster's kidneys. Since I trimmed everyone, wormed and gave the neomycin, all my pullets and hens don't seem to have the messy bottoms, but which of those solved that I am not sure. Now I just need to get my roosters healthy again.

 

[Wol1]

I'm so sorry to hear of Orion's death. It's so sad.

I hope the other roos so well.

My girls had messy bottoms like yours. I gave them all Safe-Guard paste last night and this morning almost all have nice clean fuzzy bottoms. Overnight! I was shocked to see such a quick improvement. I did get an all purpose antibiotic in case that didn't work. Good to have on hand, though. I'm curious how you measured out the amount? I gave them each a pea size splop into their mouths.

 

[Scifisarah]

I'm so sorry to hear of Orion's death. It's so sad.

I hope the other roos so well.

My girls had messy bottoms like yours. I gave them all Safe-Guard paste last night and this morning almost all have nice clean fuzzy bottoms. Overnight! I was shocked to see such a quick improvement. I did get an all purpose antibiotic in case that didn't work. Good to have on hand, though. I'm curious how you measured out the amount? I gave them each a pea size splop into their mouths.

I used 1 cc syringe that I just stuck into the end of the safeguard paste. I pressed gently on the paste syringe while drawing it up into the 1 c syringe. Then I poked it into the middle of the bread squares and grabbed one bird at a time and fed it to them outside of the run and stuck them into the closed coop so I could keep track. The Safeguard also seems to have cleared up all my hen & pullet diarrhea. It made it obvious that just the male chickens were having another problem entirely.

Darwin, my beautiful rooster from Judy Gantt I drove all the way to the Knoxville TN nationals last year is not doing very well now. He does not have the weight loss yet of Orion but he is obviously not digesting things well. Purina has not yet answered my email about why they claim their Layena feed is safe for roosters.