I recently had to put out poison to deal with an infestation of rats. I find they are too smart to trap - one gets caught and the others never go near the trap again. I placed 3 wax block baits totally out of reach of the chickens (or so I thought), but on Tuesday night last week I found and removed a bit of wax block in the corner of the chookhouse, where it must have been brought by rats. Careful searches revealed no more bait remnants.
I had at least one suspected poisoning - a Silkie whose 2 talents are eating things she shouldn’t, and being a great mother. The photo shows her trying to interest her chicks in some old straw. The morning after I removed the bait, I saw her scratching around hopefully in the corner where I found it the night before. I couldn’t tell if anyone else had eaten some.
Unfortunately a trip to the vet was not affordable right away - 47 birds and chicks - so I decided to try an antidote to the poison and observing the flock, taking any obviously sick birds in for treatment after a few days, if I could afford it.
I read online and on the packet that the antidote for brodifacoum is vitamin K1 - so that morning I placed an urgent order for a bottle of pills from an online vet product supplier, and all the flock had a meal of silver beet and dandelion leaves (high in K1) mushed up in the food processor with some cream cheese and yogurt (fat or oil is supposed to make K1 quicker to assimilate). Once they got over the shock of being offered bright green paste to eat, they couldn’t get enough of it.
No vet would sell me vitamin K1 without seeing the bird and no pharmacist without a prescription from a doctor. I had some old multivitamins with K1 so they went into the mix.
Over the next few days every bird seemed OK apart from the Silkie, who was doing black poo (I assumed because of bleeding in her digestive system) and had a pale vent - it’s hard to detect pallor on black-skinned birds, but her vent was more grey-blue-purple in color than the other 2 Silkies. Everyone else was pooping normally and showed no signs of pallor.
The pills came on Thursday last week - 10mg phytomenadione. They were chewable tablets meant for dogs and cats, the dosage being 1 tablet daily per 4-40kg body weight. I tried a quarter of a tablet daily for the Silkie and gave the rest of the flock silver beet leaves (they loved them).
The next few days were pretty anxious. The Silkie has been eating like royalty - a quarter tablet daily, in 2 doses, crushed up and added to bits of meat or cream cheese. She’s very low in the pecking order so she gets carried into the house twice a day for her “medicine”. It was leftover roast duck for a couple of days. The duck carcass went out to the chicken yard once it was too old for us to eat. After the feeding frenzy, all that was left was the backbone, picked clean. It was hilarious watching chicks balancing on the carcass, pecking away as it jerked about from the other birds pecking it.
It’s been 10 days now, dead rats turning up (straight into the garbage bin) but no sick or dead chickens. The Silkie’s poop is still dark but not black anymore. All the birds have normal appetite and behavior.
I will maintain the vitamin K1 for the next 2-3 weeks because brodifacoum has a long half-life, and see how they all go, but I hope they are all out of danger now. No dead rats have been seen for a couple of days.
If I have prevented any deaths, it was a matter of sheer good luck that I found the piece of wax block. Next time I must use proper bait stations that can only be accessed by rats or mice.
Does anyone know if vitamin K1 can harm chickens? Do they eliminate it if eaten in excess?
Mary
