Rooster with seborrhea

[uisceros]

Hi all,

My little Serama roo recently presented with a rash on his head/neck. He’s indoors for the winter, but does live outside in summer. He’s on wood pellets right now, but was on pine shavings prior to this.

I noticed the loss of feathers awhile back, but thought it was the girls going at him. Recently though, he has some crusty yellow scaling on his skin. Looks like a really bad case of seborrhea.

I’ve tried Miconazole for a few days just in case it was fungal infection, but I’m not sure it is. Tonight I washed him with some chicken shampoo and massaged the area to remove any build up. This is him shortly after that (I also applied some bag balm, which is why it looks a bit greasy):

Any ideas of anything else I should do?

 

[azygous]

Have you gone over the rest of his body very carefully to see if this extends beyond the head?

The "rash" looks a lot like Marek's when it affects the skin. Has he been vaccinated for Marek's?

If this is what you think it is, seborrhea, a dandruff shampoo could help. Mix up a spray bottle with a fourth cup shampoo to a cup of water and spray the affected skin every day and see if that helps.

 

[uisceros]

Have you gone over the rest of his body very carefully to see if this extends beyond the head?

The "rash" looks a lot like Marek's when it affects the skin. Has he been vaccinated for Marek's?

If this is what you think it is, seborrhea, a dandruff shampoo could help. Mix up a spray bottle with a fourth cup shampoo to a cup of water and spray the affected skin every day and see if that helps.

I have, but I’ll check him again. The rest of his skin seems unaffected, it’s only his head/neck.

He’s not been vaccinated for Mareks. I am super pro vaccine, but since I hatched him myself last winter, I wasn’t able to contain him without exposure to any chicken dust before I could vaccinate.

For now I’m not seeing any more crusting, but I’ll watch him. He’s also dealing with a bit of a respiratory issue right now (long standing, his flock get wheezy occasionally), so that might be affecting him as well.

Also, some context I didn’t provide before, he’s about 13 months old, and this skin issue is really recent, within the last month or so. His flock is him plus 8 girls, but he’s also around 10 other tiny bantam birds that share the same indoor space (without interacting). They all eat Kalmbach henhouse reserve or all flock. I have them on Putin all flock right now just because it was what I could get, but typically I use Kalmbach.

 

[LaFleche]

Keeping him indoors for a longer period of time can cause vitamin D deficiency of which some symptoms are skin infections/issues, feather abnormalities etc.

 

[uisceros]

Keeping him indoors for a longer period of time can cause vitamin D deficiency of which some symptoms are skin infections/issues, feather abnormalities etc.

Unfortunately there’s not much I can do about that - it gets too cold here for me to be comfortable keeping them outside during the winter.

I can supplement them though! I’m currently adding the rooster booster pelleted vitamins to their food, but I plan on adding some poultry cell as well.

 

[LaFleche]

They will all need additional vitamin D3 if you keep them indoors for longer than just two weeks.
Be careful not to overdose the other vitamin supplements as overdosing can be harmful.