Mummahen87
Hatching
- Dec 4, 2022
- 6
- 1
- 8
Hi all, we have a flock now of about 30 birds. A bunch of which are from a hatching we did ourselves. We started with 2 Isa browns hatched at my daughter's school. Others were bred by a friend from his personal flock who have zero health issues and had been regularly hatching chicks and adding to it at that stage.
We have had no health issues at all, hatched our chicks out ourselves (first time doing so) our chicks are now10 weeks old and some alarming signs have just started happening. It started after having to introduce them all to one another when flooding came here. Their coop went underwater and they ended up in the horsefloat, up on tyres, to keep them all dry. Then one chick, who had a noticeably dirty head, was seen to be walking oddly, almost like it couldn't balance. It progressed to not walking. We isolated it and brought it inside as soon as noticing. I rang our vet who, after explaining our situation, believed it was from an injury not an illness or deficiency. For context, we have 2 full grown roosters who just ignore the chicks other than rousing at them if they take food from the hens, we also had a young rooster who took it upon himself to try to mate with the young chicks. We ended up culling him thinking perhaps he was hurting them, we have also had issues with pigs during the floods (they had to be allowed free run so that they didn't drown) so thought it was a possibility that one of them had grabbed the chick. I tried some vitamins and electrolytes added to the chicks water and when the vet said injury, we added another quiet chick in with it for comapy as it was incredibly depressed and would spend pretty much all day with its head buried in the sawdust, not eating or drinking unless disturbed and encouraged. It perked up with the changes but still wasn't able to get its legs underneath it at all. It had plenty of strength it the legs, they just seemed to go in the wrong directions. It couldn't balance at all. After trying everything we could think of, we decided to listen to vets advice and cull chick because of quality of life. I need to note here that I had noticed it's poo was offensive and yellow but figured perhaps it was because of the additions to the water, and the fact it wasn't moving around and foraging like it normally would.
2 days after culling the chick, we noticed another chick (the one that had been in with it) also displaying some of the early symptoms (odd gait, almost like a marching soldier) as well as losing balance easily and having to use its wings to rebalance itself) it has again progressed to the point it can't balance to roost and has just started laying around more, although it will still move when needed, just awkwardly) it's the same progression of the other chick but seems to be a little slower. As soon as we noticed this one, I rang the vet again (they are also recovering from the flooding so appointments are very hard to get) who then said it was probably mareks (again without seeing the chick), though added it was unusual with no introductions of new birds. I asked if it was possible it was a deficiency and wondered of we could try that avenue first. She has given us doses of B1 to inject the chick with for a week. There has been no noticeable improvement (2 injections so far) and if anything is probably slightly worse. When researching I thought it was B2 that was the deficiency that often caused this sort of things so did she give me the wrong thing? I did notice today that one of the other chicks did a quite runny very offensive smelling yellow poo. I wasn't sure if it was a cecal poo or coccidiosis. Could that be our issue? Vets aren't really interested in helping as they have ither bigger emergencies and see chickens as stock not pets. I'm just at a loss not sure what else to do. I see years of experience on here and am hoping someone might have more of an idea than I do. We've only had chickens for 12 months and it's breaking all of our hearts to watch this happening.
We have had no health issues at all, hatched our chicks out ourselves (first time doing so) our chicks are now10 weeks old and some alarming signs have just started happening. It started after having to introduce them all to one another when flooding came here. Their coop went underwater and they ended up in the horsefloat, up on tyres, to keep them all dry. Then one chick, who had a noticeably dirty head, was seen to be walking oddly, almost like it couldn't balance. It progressed to not walking. We isolated it and brought it inside as soon as noticing. I rang our vet who, after explaining our situation, believed it was from an injury not an illness or deficiency. For context, we have 2 full grown roosters who just ignore the chicks other than rousing at them if they take food from the hens, we also had a young rooster who took it upon himself to try to mate with the young chicks. We ended up culling him thinking perhaps he was hurting them, we have also had issues with pigs during the floods (they had to be allowed free run so that they didn't drown) so thought it was a possibility that one of them had grabbed the chick. I tried some vitamins and electrolytes added to the chicks water and when the vet said injury, we added another quiet chick in with it for comapy as it was incredibly depressed and would spend pretty much all day with its head buried in the sawdust, not eating or drinking unless disturbed and encouraged. It perked up with the changes but still wasn't able to get its legs underneath it at all. It had plenty of strength it the legs, they just seemed to go in the wrong directions. It couldn't balance at all. After trying everything we could think of, we decided to listen to vets advice and cull chick because of quality of life. I need to note here that I had noticed it's poo was offensive and yellow but figured perhaps it was because of the additions to the water, and the fact it wasn't moving around and foraging like it normally would.
2 days after culling the chick, we noticed another chick (the one that had been in with it) also displaying some of the early symptoms (odd gait, almost like a marching soldier) as well as losing balance easily and having to use its wings to rebalance itself) it has again progressed to the point it can't balance to roost and has just started laying around more, although it will still move when needed, just awkwardly) it's the same progression of the other chick but seems to be a little slower. As soon as we noticed this one, I rang the vet again (they are also recovering from the flooding so appointments are very hard to get) who then said it was probably mareks (again without seeing the chick), though added it was unusual with no introductions of new birds. I asked if it was possible it was a deficiency and wondered of we could try that avenue first. She has given us doses of B1 to inject the chick with for a week. There has been no noticeable improvement (2 injections so far) and if anything is probably slightly worse. When researching I thought it was B2 that was the deficiency that often caused this sort of things so did she give me the wrong thing? I did notice today that one of the other chicks did a quite runny very offensive smelling yellow poo. I wasn't sure if it was a cecal poo or coccidiosis. Could that be our issue? Vets aren't really interested in helping as they have ither bigger emergencies and see chickens as stock not pets. I'm just at a loss not sure what else to do. I see years of experience on here and am hoping someone might have more of an idea than I do. We've only had chickens for 12 months and it's breaking all of our hearts to watch this happening.