I have an EE who is 12 weeks old. She has been panting off and on since she was about 5 weeks old. She pants even when it is cool outside. She does not have any discharge from her nose or eyes. There is nothing in her throat. She does make a honking sound instead of a normal chicken sound. She tends not to fly around much as that makes her pant more but she is not lethargic. She wanders with the other chickens and scratches and eats and dust baths. She has just come off Sulmet because they had Cocci. It didn't seem to help with the panting. I have taken her to the vet to have her sinuses and throat cultured to see if they could figure out what was causing the problems. The culture came back inconclusive. She is still getting some medicated chick feed mixed in with developer feed. I put VetRx on her nose in the morning and at night and she gets Poly Vi Sol every day. The run outside is a little dusty, which I try to keep under control, and she does tend to have dust on her beak at night. The run and coop have pine chips in them. I clean it frequently and it does not smell of ammonia or mildew. The vet has put her on Clavamox hoping this is bacterial and we can get rid of it but told me that I would never be able to eat her eggs EVER. Which while I would like to eat her eggs it's not a must as she is more a pet then anything. So my questions: 1. anything else I should/could be doing? 2. Is it true that if I give her Clavamox I will never be able to eat her eggs? I'm hoping to get her healthy as I really don't want to have to cull her. She is my favorite chicken.
Have your vet swab for gape worm- if the vet doesn't know what it is, they can look it up- relatively easy to do, but a culture q-tip is kind of needed as it is smaller and longer. Or deworm her with albendazole or fenbendazole. Wazine does not kill gapeworm. Clavamox is off label for chickens period, laying hens too. But then so it albendazole, fenbendazole- and any other the others that most people use. Your vet is very right to tell you that withdrawal time for an off label drug is FOR LIFE. Most people do not pay any attention to this. If you sell eggs or give them to other people you need to pay attention to withdrawal times- drug residues are to be avoided if possible. If you are eating the eggs yourself, and if you are not worried about drug residues (and not allergic to penicillins) then consider eating the eggs after some arbitrary discard period.
