Sad Update on Haley :( 3 wk old chick sneezing turned worse

[kisat]

Thanks SpottedCrow. That means a lot. I'm sure it helped them with me there, the way that they both wanted keep making sure I was there by opening their eyes and looking at me when I was holding them. It hurt to see them dying, but at least I was with them and talking to them - which is what I wanted - so they weren't without me when they went in the end.

 

[ruth]

I'm so sorry you lost your chicks. I have been watching this thread but didn't post since you were in good hands with dlhunicorn's advice. I too would have adviced the Poli-Vi-Sol.

I followed the link about cedar chips and find it interesting. I had always heard not to use them for chicks and that it was toxic so I never have. But someone dropped off 5 "Easter" chicks the other day that they bought their kid at school fundraiser and paid $90 for and now doesn't want them anymore. Anyway, I told her I would take them and give them a good home. She had someone drop them off. Well first it was bad enough to look in and see 4 roos and a female. But they are the scragliest ugliest chicks I've ever seen. Bald spots under belly, missing feathers, quills sticking up and the 4 roos have HUGE jaundice orange combs. Much too big for a 2 month old chick. I've been wondering what she did to these chicks because though they seem well and have integrated with my flock, they look horrible. Anyway, she just had someone drop off their feed, which was layer feed, and a big bag of CEDAR CHIPS. I'm wondering now if she raised them on layer feed and cedar chips for the past two months if that's why they look like freaks to me. My two month old free ranging chicks are beautiful and fully feathered and are twice the size of these. The weird color in the combs stood out when I read the link about cedar chips and jaundice.

So I just wanted to say I'm sorry you lost yours, I'm hoping others will realize the dangers of cedar chips, and I'll now keep watch of these drop off chicks to see if the same symptoms develop.

 

[kisat]

Thanks so much Ruth. I really appreciate that.

Yes, I think we need to start calling dlhunicorn the 'chicken guru'

I'm going to start this y'know

Yeh, so much info is about cedar chips being bad, but never as in depth and I wanted make sure that the info helped someone. So hopefully it will, if not, just to educate better.

Wow. One - that was wonderful of you. I'd probably have done the same thing. And Two - my goodness! I hope that they get better. And hope that they don't get worse, or anything of that nature. Man. I do remember reading that the cedar alone can cause severe itching as well. So maybe that also is relative to the feathers.

But I can add something I didn't since it was the day before they died I noticed it and I don't think it would've changed anything. Plus the fact that I just didn't remember. I noticed that their legs were quite pale. Haley should've had yellow as dark as her sis and hers was off looking. Same with Ruby. Ruby's looked horrible and nearly see through white. Just not healthy.

We had my brother's cats die from liver failure as well recently. One, we had to put him down because we couldn't handle him being pumped full of drugs just to stabalize him, then turn around and spend thousands on trying to fix a problem that would've ended up with his death anyway. We couldn't handle prolonging his death like that. Anyway, his eyes turned yellow and his pink nose did too. He pottied a black tar liquid as well showing the liver failure so in feces, I'd keep that in mind as well. Which just reminded me that one of the good chicks have that. I'm hoping to goodness that it's just the avia charged water turned it dark! Oh good lordies

Gonna have to watch them closely now.

 

[SpottedCrow]

I do admit to using cedar chips in the coop with Tom and Jerry but it was a thin layer mixed with shredded paper and it was outdoors so there was plenty of ventilation.

 

[kisat]

Yeh, I do know that there are some people that have used it - I've read a bunch even on this site - that have used it without problems so I think that is more to do with the majority of users that have problems with it - there are always exceptions to the rule with anything. For me, it's safer and less risk to just overall say forget about it .

 

[SpottedCrow]

I don't recommend cedar or aromatic shavings even for small animals. and I work in a petshop.

 

[kisat]

That's good. If only more feed stores were more educated. Too bad you weren't the one working at my feed store when my chickies were there