Possible coccidiosis in 3 week old baby chicks

[mimifw03]

You already got great feed back!

I have always recommended fecal floats to verify condition..

This year I discovered that the parasites can pass intermittently and NEVER show up on a fecal float. Did the vet check for protozoa which is what the coccidia are?

The same day my float came back clean a hen pooped out a large round worm right in front of me!

For THAT reason my vet recommends worming all my animals at least once per year in MY location.

I have raised hundreds if not a thousand chicks.. I have witnessed personally a chick poop blood one time and regular the next several.

If you saw blood, (which only one out of the 9-11 known strains of coccidia that effect chickens will present as) then treatment ASAP with Corid is suggested at the full drench dose. Corid is NOT deadly but coccidiosis can be very rapidly.

Noting that coccidiosis can also be overcome in mild cases by simply correcting the condition causing it.. Shavings were once wetter under neath than they appeared to be on top.. making sure they are DRY and also that WATER stays dropping (poo) free as that is how it spreads fastest.

Yes, everyone here gave me great feedback! I just meant that I got better info from the vet this morning than I did from the vet I saw yesterday. There was DEFINITELY blood. Sometimes they would poop out just blood without really any fecal matter.

I wash their waterer with soap and water every day and I dump it and change it out multiple times a day since they keep getting shavings in it. We hung it higher now and it seems to be helping to keep it from getting quite as dirty. We change out their shavings about twice a week and clean up droppings daily.

They've been improving, but I'm still seeing some blood from time to time which is why I went to another vet to make sure we weren't missing anything and to make sure there wasn't something bacterial going on.

 

[Eggcessive]

I agree with Wyorp Rock and Casportpony’s info to give your chicks the maximum Corid dosage of 10 ml per gallon of water. For any very weak ones, you can also give undiluted Corid 0.1 ml per pound of weight orally once a day in addition to the treated water.

 

[Donna Ritter]

Hello all. I'm new to the chicken world and I am getting all kinds of mixed information and I'm at a loss about what to do. We recently purchased 10 baby chicks that were 2 days old. They are a little over 3 weeks old now. Everything was fine until yesterday morning. I found blood in the brooder and noticed one chick that was obviously not feeling well. I picked her up and there was blood dripping out of her vent. She died a couple of hours later. We suspected coccidiosis and started liquid Corid right away. Several others began to show symptoms later that day.

The dosing is throwing me off. The guy I bought them from said Corid is extremely potent and can easily kill them. He said they used 1 teaspoon in a 3.5 gallon waterer so I could only put one or two drops in their quart sized waterer or they would die. Everything I've read says to give them quite a bit more and that it's hard to overdose them on it. My neighbor whose baby chicks just had it told me to do 3 mL per gallon so that's what we've been doing and they have improved a lot, but I don't know if it's enough medication to really kill the parasite.

I also took a fecal sample to a vet today after the chicks had been on the Corid for about 24 hours. She said she didn't really see any parasites on the fecal float test, but I'm not sure which chick the sample came from. Most of the blood was gone at this point so I had no way to know if it came from a sick chick. She also told me that Corid is like an antibiotic and can help with bacterial infections too. Again, this goes against everything I've read. I saw online that it's not an antibiotic, but a thiamine blocker. She also recommended 6 mL in a liter which equates to 22 mL in a gallon which seems crazy high! The most I've seen that you should give them is 10 mL in a gallon. I will probably bring in another sample tomorrow for a smear to look for bacteria, but I don't know if I can trust the vet's dosing instruction if there turns out to be a bacterial infection.

I'm just a very lost and confused chicken mama right now. Any help or advice would be appreciated.

I think your vet may not know a lot about chickens. There is a good article on coccidiosis and amprolium in BYC entitled "Treating Coccidiosis with Corid, Amprol, Ampromed - The Correct Dose." I did a search on Google to find the article. I'm not sure how to find it in BYC. Maybe use the search feature.

 

[Donna Ritter]

It's a radiant heat plate that they can go up under if they want to. It doesn't heat the entire brooder. They mostly sit on top of it now, but they like to go under it at night.

We use the radiant heat platea, they are safer for all.