Sdwd

[Cetawin]

My poor blue boy...give him a big hug, wattle rub and kiss for me and let him I know I love him and am praying for him. I finished the first round of edge beading on his likeness last night and am about to start the last round then I can start punching holes, lacing it and adding the fringe and feathers.

Cyn is privy to this already but soapmaking and a sweet tooth do not go together. I have a loaf of goat milk soap scented to a wonderful chocolate buttercream...it smells so good you want to eat it. Hubby was very displeased with the aroms lingering in the house and being told he cannot eat it. hahahahahahaha I also have two other loaves curing....I need more hours in each day can I add 6 - 8 please? Anyone have a device that will do that?

 

[crazyhen]

Oh, Chocolate buttercream. You would tease him. LOL gloria Jean

 

[catdaddyfro]

SDWDers? huh? I can't believe ya'll let this go this long whatz up? heat sickness? LOL

Jeff

 

[speckledhen]

LH and I have had a trying couple of days. She'll post all about it soon, I'm sure.

 

[seminolewind]

85-88 today. WooHoo! Cleaned out a coop then plunked into the hot tub (not hot in the summer). Just refreshing!

 

[Cetawin]

Okay so Friday came and with it chaos and havoc....and loss. That morning the girls and boys came bounding out of the coop as usual except for my Sumo Kung Fu Chicken...Delilah. She is the big black orp girl I was given by Cyn who had spurs! I have had Delilah with me for a year plus. She survived the horrible heat loss day last year, predators and a leg injury...or so we thought. Back in April I went to visit Cyn and while I was gone...the very day I left, DeDe got her foot and spur caught in a wire dog crate and was found hanging upside down by my husband with her leg injured. I came home and began nursing duty and at Cyn's suggestion gave her a round of antibiootics...5 days worth of Penicillin. Well she spent weeks in the house and went back out to the flock and resumed her position of head honcho. About 6 weeks ago her leg looked swollen to me but had no heat in it and it was not gushy or fluidy like it had infection but I gave her another round of antibiotics (penicillin) and so she continued being Delilah...pushing her weight around, leading up the crew and beating the tar out of my youngest rooster, Hector. So...fast forward to Friday...Cheyenne comes in with DeDe and tells me she is not acting right...she is letting Cheyenne cuddle her and she was just sitting on the floor of the coop in front of the nest box. So I look her over quickly and even lifted her tail to check her vent...nothing could be seen so we assumed her age (almost 5 years), the heat and her ornery nature was just slowing her down some....now I had commented to Cynthia the day before this that DeDe and Athena we moving slowly and the last to leave the coop. So, I told Cheyenne to take her back to the coop and set her down in front of the fan and we would keep an eye on her, so off they went. A few minutes later Cheyenne comes running back to the house holding out her shirt and saying "Mom, something is wrong DeDe is bleeding look" There was a huge bloody spot on her shirt so off we go to the coop, with Cyn in tow as we were talking on the phone about DeDe's behavior.

We get to the coop and I look her over really good even having Cheyenne hold her up high so I could see underneath and her my heart dropped...I saw a maggot in her feathers and pulled the feathers apart and she had a hole about 2" x 2" and about 1/2" - 3/4" deep into her body cavity...I could see inside her. So we took her in and did the warm water flush and removing the maggots, cleaning everything up and then I made a sterile saline solution and flushed everything out with that....then I set out removing all the dead skin and tissue I could safely remove. I gave her about 1/3 cc of penicillin by injection but she was fighting me so hard I had to give up getting the rest in so I crushed up half of 500 mg penicillin tablet and syringed it in her mouth. She had a huge abcess that literally burst as my daughter was carrying her but I had no idea how it got there. So...trying to decide what to do, if I could help her or should I put her down and frantic because I love this big old girl, I called my vet...an equine vet that I adore and trust with my own life. There is an avian vet available but I do not like him or trust him so my vet calls me back, we talk and he says he will come by on his way home about 4 pm. So we wait. Vet comes and spends an hour and half here checking her over, cutting away dead tissue, examining her, giving her a massive dose of antibiotics...1200 mg of a strong one...enough for a 1000 lb horse and leaves me with another 1200 mg to split between two days. He gives her a 30% chance of survival and then there is this huge hole to contend with...but that he had ideas about if she could survive this raging infection which had abcessed and burst.

So, after all this hoopla and DeDe resting I go outside and call my birds who were wandering around as usual...I needed to see my birds and pet them and such after this ordeal. Everyone is present and accounted for except my crazy red cochin Ruby....very independent girl so I start calling her by her nickname "Rubiness"...she always comes running....but she doesn't. I spend the next 2 hours looking all over my 5.1 acres, under shrubs, coops, in nooks and crannies and even the woods....no sign of her and not a feather to be found indicating she was attacked. But she never came home and we could not find her and in my heart I knew she was gone.

Later that evening hubby is walking the dog and I am going to check on my birds and say goodnight when I hear scratching at the back of one of my coops...husband and the dog hear it to and they start walking back towards me and the coops and I pick up a piece of galvanized pipe laying there from fencing work and start to the back of my bantam coop...what do I find? A ****** fox on its hinds legs sratching at the pop door trying to get it open....I went nuts and hit the thing with the pipe, hubby is coming around the coops and the dog is going nuts...fox takes off towards husband and sees dog and him turns comes back and tries to get by me so I swing at it and miss and just as it passes me I reached down and grabbed for it (yeah stupid I know) grabbed it by the rear left leg and it was trying to bite me so I slammed it against the back of the coop and decided that was an effective method so I continued to slam it against the coops until it stopped moving. Yeah I killed it, brutally and have not lost a second's sleep over it. For all I know that sobkilled my cochin earlier.

This morning...while talking with Cyn and updating her on our DeDe, DeDe begins flapping hysterically and I am trying to calm her and talking to her and holding her head and she is looking at me with the most incredible expression and she passes. So, Cheyenne, Cyn and I are all three in tears and too upset to think this entire thing through at the moment. DeDe was laid to rest by my Thor facing the rising sun.

Cyn calls me later and after all our brainstorming, my talking with the vet and thinking about it all night wondering how I missed such an injury....Cyn sittting on her hammock with her Barred Rock Amanda figures it out. The infection she got when she hurt her leg, was slowed down by the penicllin and DeDe's overall healthy big self, fought it as long as she could but the infection ran through her body and literally exited her body in her abdominal area and she was literally eaten up with infection....I should have figured it out because I knew it was infection, you could smell it and see it plus the vet told me it was a raging infection but we assumed it was from an injury externally when in reality it was from inside her.

I will post a detail post (like this one was not right?) with pictures (graphic and gross) in the illnesses section and I hope it helps someone else later.

Watch the leg injuries because they can become lethal silently.

 

[speckledhen]

It just came to me in a rush, remembering that gumpsgirl's vet told me that Zane could have an infection from his leg injury and to start him on antibiotics right away. This was before I even saw any infection in Zane's leg, but as you all know if you remember Zane's story, the penicillin didn't do the trick and neither did two other antibiotics I had here, so Dr. Peter Brown, bless his generous heart, sent me a super strong antibiotic to try one last thing for Zane, Cipro, which finally kicked out the hock infection and saved his life. It's the reason I told her to give Delilah penicillin when she got back to KY from my house after the leg injury, as a preventative measure, just like that vet had told me about Zane.

Remembering all that and sitting with my Amanda, who also has some obvious leg issue, coincidentally also me noticing she had lots of fluid under the skin over the top of that leg and up her side and deciding to give her a round of PenG, it dawned on me why DeDe had an abcess that came from the inside out and why there had never been any wound noticed. She never had an exterior wound. The penicillin LH had given her twice knocked the infection down, but not out. When it raged through her body and began to abcess out probably a tiny hole with pus, flies laid eggs, filling that mass of dead tissue and infection with maggots.

So, that hen with her ornery nature, fighting through a dog crate, hanging herself and badly hurting her leg, pretty much did herself in. No way LH could have seen it coming, especially when there was no obvious infection in the leg itself, it being hidden inside her big old body. From LH's experience with a Brahma hen who had a heart infection for months and months, as told to her by the vet in a necropsy, they can live a long time with infection if they are in good overall health otherwise.

 

[catdaddyfro]

It just came to me in a rush, remembering that gumpsgirl's vet told me that Zane could have an infection from his leg injury and to start him on antibiotics right away. This was before I even saw any infection in Zane's leg, but as you all know if you remember Zane's story, the penicillin didn't do the trick and neither did two other antibiotics I had here, so Dr. Peter Brown, bless his generous heart, sent me a super strong antibiotic to try one last thing for Zane, Cipro, which finally kicked out the hock infection and saved his life. It's the reason I told her to give Delilah penicillin when she got back to KY from my house after the leg injury, as a preventative measure, just like that vet had told me about Zane.

Remembering all that and sitting with my Amanda, who also has some obvious leg issue, coincidentally also me noticing she had lots of fluid under the skin over the top of that leg and up her side and deciding to give her a round of PenG, it dawned on me why DeDe had an abcess that came from the inside out and why there had never been any wound noticed. She never had an exterior wound. The penicillin LH had given her twice knocked the infection down, but not out. When it raged through her body and began to abcess out probably a tiny hole with pus, flies laid eggs, filling that mass of dead tissue and infection with maggots.

So, that hen with her ornery nature, fighting through a dog crate, hanging herself and badly hurting her leg, pretty much did herself in. No way LH could have seen it coming, especially when there was no obvious infection in the leg itself, it being hidden inside her big old body. From LH's experience with a Brahma hen who had a heart infection for months and months, as told to her by the vet in a necropsy, they can live a long time with infection if they are in good overall health otherwise.


Yes they can, this one of the ways Mother Nature helps out the lesser, wee ones(delicate/fragile) down low on the food chain and too that are susceptible/more prone to injury than other creatures. The chicken produces a great type of antibody(s) it-self just for such incidental situations, and too another reason Moms homemade chicken soup(I call chicken penicillin) works so well as a common cold remedy, LOL

Jeff

ETA: LH sorry for your unfortunate ordeals the last couple of days. and you go girl(ol killer) I bet that's one fox that wished he'd never, ever ventured that close to the fury of a woman's scorn. LOL


Here's alittle story i call hangin'TUFF

Sorry for your losses in the past couple of days LH I know you do the best you can but its sometimes hard to rear these delicate/fragile critters sometimes.

Speaking of delicate and fragile well I have one that is not for sure his name is Reese he is a Good Shepard Barred Rock cockerel well almost a rooster as he will be 1 yrs.old in Sept. this year. Anyway this boy or might I say all of these BR are made out of good stuff for sure. He is recovering from Mareks believe it or not but he is. He will never be all right again but his sheer determination and will to live absolutely amazed me. He is up and about now, spoiled rotten and demands food everytime I go out to the barn. Totaly unbeleivable as he has been suffering since around March so thats 4 mo. I have had 2 others a hen and a 3 yr old Production red rooster they didn't make it but he has so far and is improving , so much as his comb in now reddened back up and getting back to a normal size. I think he whipped it but has a lame leg from it but he can still skeedaddle right quick over to the feed bowl and can get his own water too. I nursed him for many, many hours on end simply because he showed me he was not going to give in and by golly he's here to prove it. Most, even I would have knocked him in the head a long time ago but something stood out with this guy that let me leave him be just to see what happened. he's my first and only chicken to ever survive mareks disease. of course I have also saved 2 dogs in my life too from Parvo its bad too but I did it and just as recent as a couple years ago with one of my current dogs B.J. I imagine the vet wouldn't have had as good results as I simply because I practically camped out with him and my other female(long ago) and tended their every need for sure. I had to continually keep them pumped full of liquids as parvo is a serious diarreahal disease and they die from dehydration. The chicken(Reese) with the Mareks took a good bit of time too, had to feed him regularly(small amounts) because the disease affects the liver so and the reason they poop the green, green poop is an abnormal supply of bile so they need something in the gizzard continually as the bile is so toxic to the rest of the digestive tract(think battery acid here) and plus I had to give him drink+ he got raw eggs too for nutrition by syringe for a long time cause he was too weak to drink. He talked to me then when eating and still does now esp.when he's ready to eat, and he's got a home here till something else takes him away he deserves it.

 

[speckledhen]

LH, thought you'd like to see some pictures. This first one is Delilah and Gypsy as youngsters:





Remember Glenda, daughter of Suede and Caroline? She hatched with them:

 

[seminolewind]

Poor DeDe ! I'm amazed on how well they hide their illness. Cetawin, I've seen the same thing happen when a hen died in my arms. They flap around. I think it's just like when you euthanize them and they flap around.

I went out a few days ago and found my Polish girl, Princess Fluffy Britches, hanging upside down with her foot caught in a fence. In the sun, of course. She was fine after, but walked like a penguin for some hours. A week before that, I locked up the coop one night and the next morning DH didn't see our Jersey roo, and went looking around and found him tangled up in some vines and couldn't get loose. Poor baby.

Jeff, I have been battling Marek's for a year now. Vaccinated or not, I've lost 15 youngsters and 2 adults. One adult had 2 siblings die over a year ago, and succomed a few months ago.

Lately I hatched a batch of Polish , vaccinated, and 5/7 died of opportunistic bacteria due to poor immune system due to Marek's . I have 2 Polish , that seem recovered from Marek's. One was paralyzed and lived in my bedroom for 6 weeks, and now has been living happy with my silkies symptom free, the latest one seems to have responded well to Penicillin, but had symptoms of the wasting. But then started to eat and eat. So she went to live with the silkies too.
I can say they recovered, but I can't say for how long. These are my first vaccinated ones, so maybe they will be symptom free for a long time. As long as I feel food in their crops, I know they're okay. And yes, both were down to the green poo.

I've been pm'ing back and forth with winterwolf1, who is in the same boat. It's been good sharing info with her. We both learn alot from eachother, and share some sadness.