Possible URI/Chicken died/Treat rest of flock??

chicks4kids

Songster
10 Years
Apr 22, 2009
2,681
20
229
Northern Indiana
I have a barred rock hen just at a year in age that became sick on Tuesday. She was fine then I noticed her left eye running. Then on Wednesday, she just stood by the coop and didn't free range at all. Eye still running and goopy but now sounding wheezy, gasping for air, breathing with her beak open, and sneezing a little, not much (almost sounded like Pneumonia). Don't know about her poo, too many girls running around pooing. So I quarantined her in the garage and gave her some VetRx. Today she seemed to be getting worse...harder for her to breath, more phlegmmy (flemmy) and more rattley. Her eye was running worse. She also stopped drinking water today.

So this morning I went and bought her some ointment for her eye and also Duramycin-10. Put it in her water and a few hours later, I was sitting with her and she went into a gasping fit trying to get air, rolling her head completely backwards into her back, it was an awful all of about 45 seconds of this, and she was gone.

I checked her throat before all of this happened for gapeworms, but found nothing. Checked her crop...nothing. I was thinking it was a respiratory infection.

The only thing that has happened was on Monday night before I noticed her runny eye, one of my Beagles got out of his pen and I just know he scared the daylights out of my girls and rooster, because the following morning, they refused to come out of their coop.

My question, now that I've laid out the scene...

1. should I treat the rest of the flock with the Duramycine-10? I've checked them and haven't noticed any heavy breathing, or obstructed breathing, and they all seem to be fine. It's just that this was hard today, my first loss, and I would be devastated if it happened to another one...or all.

2. if I do treat their water, should I still collect their eggs??
 
I'm not a big fan of treating chickens with antibiotics if they aren't showing any symptoms of possible infection. So, if it were me, I would clean the coop and run thoroughly with Nolvasan or Oxine, change litter and anything else you have on the ground. Completely disinfect. Put vitamins in everyone's water for about 3 days, maybe add some garlic cloves. Keep a close watch for symptoms and immediately isolate anyone who shows them. We had ILT run through our flock last year and had to quarantine about 1/3 of the birds who showed symptoms. Fortunately, antibiotics (and, in one extreme case, steroids) saved all but two of them. To be safe, don't eat the eggs of anyone you are treating with antibiotics (we wait for 2 weeks after treatment before using ours). Best of luck and so sorry for your loss.
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Lynn
 
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