I also hope this helps Carbon, it seems like it will. I am dealing with something that seems a bit similar with two of my molting four years old ex-batts. I am not ready to treat them.with antibiotics though, notably because they already had health issue before that.Wet and chilly. Three hours today.
It became apparent last week the if I couldn't put a stop to Carbon's diarrhea she was going to get weaker and weaker and eventually die.
Whatever the problem it affected her balance as well as her digestion. In Carbon's weakened condition from the diarrhea and moulting, especially given how long I had not interevened for, any heavy medication, esoecially a wrong medication was likely to do more harm than good.
I've tried a few local vets that say they see chickens, the only one that had a avian vet had one part time and there weren't any appointments left for the next clinic.
I got in contact with Gloria who was our vet in Spain. I sent pictures and an explanation of the problem (more pictures) and asked her advice.
The advice if she's still eating and drinking. Double dose of Flubendazole given directly for six days; on the third day give Azithromycin (125mg) for three days with the Flubendazole.
A story about Gloria.
I had a hen with a partially impacted crop I thought that I hadn't been able to get rid of with the usaul techniques. I took the hen to Gloria. Gloria felt the hens crop on the inside with a solid flexible tube and thought the crop was okay and there was a blockage in the proventriculus. It's quite common apparently, often a large piece of corn stuck where the proventriculus narrows at the top. Gloria got a slightly wider diameter hollow flexible tube and fed the tube into the hens crop and out the other end into the proventriculus, applied a bit of sucktion at the end with a syringe and start pulling gung out. It took a while, a small pea sized bit at a time pouring some water into the hen each time the tube came out. You could tell it was working because the hen started adjusting her crop and making that goose like movement to get things moving down. Gloria is still fishing while all this is going on.
Those of you that have had to give medication by beak will know that just getting the beak open and the syringe in place can be difficult with the more fiesty chickens. If you've crop fed you'll know that sideways flick of the head that has the tube flying out of the hens mouth. Gloria dealt with all that and found the exit to the crop and dragged stuff out while I did my best to keep the hen still. Yes I was impressed.
I took Gloria's advice.
I got some Azithromycin. I can't say how.
Azithromycin encounters less bacterial resistance than many of the other common antibiotics and is more suitable for digestive tract infections than say amoxicilllin. This makes it suitable for short doasge periods apparently which will hopefully avoid the eating and crop problems I've experienced before.
Todays samples (day two with antibiotic). No wet patches, mostly solid with urates showing white with the droppings.
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Daytime deposit by Carbon. It wasn't as grre as it looks in the picture.
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Carbon eating.
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Everybody eating.
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Just Henry eating. He eats more of the commercial feed and grains than the others mainly because if he does any foraging he gives what he finds away. He's much happier with the 0.9% calcium feed.
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Fewer balance problems evidnet today with Carbon. Not ideal weather to observe in due to them not being out for the entire time. She's eating well. Hopefully she'll get over this.
This seems most likely as I took the jar off the radiator because it was too hot.
@casportpony did the math and probably remember the particulars
