I had a hen that i posted about a while back and everyone told me she had a contagious respitory problem. Her eye became swollen and bubbles came out. I ended up culling that chicken, in hopes the disease didnt spread to my entire flock. It looks like the disease did spread, one of my blue cochins has a swollen eye this morning. I have heard many people tell me that one choice for me is to cull the entire flock. I have about 25 chickens right now and 2 ducks. Does everyone agree that i need to cull? Or do you think i need to treat some of the infected birds with Tylan. Either way, i cant get any new chickens because then they will become infected. I am stuck between a rock and a hard place and dont know what to do. I could cull then clean the coop and everything in it extremely good and hope that if i got new chickens they wouldnt get the disease. Or i could keep the chickens i already have and treat them. Hope the disease dont come back after the treatment and keep a closed flock. ( I really didnt want to keep a closed flock because i wanted to keep adding and slowly switch over to more exotic breeds of chickens.) Please give me your opinion in this situation. I really need it. Thanks
take the sick bird to the state vet to get tested. That way you will get a definite diagnosis before culling unnecessarily. I made the mistake of not getting some tested, and wound up culling when it was NOT necessary (including kids pet birds, breeding birds..) Much better to get a definite answer via the lab test, instead of just guessing based on symptoms.
