I bought a 3 week old polish tophat chick a few weeks ago along with some other chicks. After a couple days of having her I noticed her sneezing every once in a while. The following day the sneezing was worse. I researched what might be causing this and thought it was possibly the start of a respiratory infection. Since she is one of 5 chicks I put Termycin in their water for a week hoping to treat them all in case she was contagious. She seemed to get a little better with the Termycin, but the sneeze never totally went away. This week I came home and noticed the sneezing was very frequent and she had bubbles in her eye. I seperated her from the others and ran to the store and got Tylen 50 and injected .25 cc under her skin. She doesn't seem to have gotten any better and I am having to feed her with a syringe. The other chicks seem to be perfectly fine even after being in the same coop with her for almost three weeks. What else can I do and could this possibly be something other than a respiratory infection?
It sounds like a respiratory infection to me, but may be a virus, which doesn't respond to antibiotics. The antibiotics sometimes prevent secondary bacterial infections which can be a complication. You may be dealing with Infectious bronchitis, a virus. It lasts about a month, all the chickens have been exposed already, and certain chickens can remain carriers for up to a year. Here are some common respiratory diseases: http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/ps044
Most likely you will just have to let her go through it and hope for the best. Mortality is pretty low in these kind of respiratory things.
Continue giving the Tylan50 for five days or so. This will help by the third day if the disease is a bacterial respiratory disease. If it is a virus, though, antibiotics will only prevent secondary infection. The most you can do is provide supportive treatment (electrolytes, probiotics, nutritious feed, warmth), and hope for the best. Good luck to you and your little bird!
