Sudden sick bird--neurological?

[jajeanpierre]

I am south of Houston.

My roo continues to improve. He has lost some weight during all of this. His keel bone is very prominent right now. I have him on some starter crumbles and he has been getting some boiled eggs.

He is walking now, his wings are less droopy and he doesn't seem to need to use his wings to support himself. That being said, he is still fairly unsteady on his feet. I put him in back in his coop today with his hens - everyone was happy to see each other. He went right back to acting like their rooster - cackling to them over the feeder and crowing. Geesh - he was crowing at 2 AM from his crate that was right outside our room.

I don't know what he had - I worry about Marek's and that he could potentially be a carrier, but I'm not sure. The only symptoms he had were lameness, ataxia, and weight loss. He never had true paralysis, iris changes, poop problems, etc. He only really went "off his feed" for a few days. Once I put him into an isolation crate where he couldn't really try to walk around and he had to have cage rest - he started eating and drinking very well. I did give him some sulmet when I was treating some chicks for coccidia. I was worried about his kidney function with the sulmet - but I figured it was like my hail mary at the time - I was sure he wasn't going to make it.

What you are describing is very much like my hen. She has thick foam "shoes" on her feet so there is no pressure on the sole of her feet (bilateral bumble foot), but she just lies on the grass and uses her wings to support her even lying down.

She lost a ton of weight, but is now putting it back on.

I wonder if it is some kind of disease.

I have a hen that is laying internally that now really needs to be put down. I just can't do it even though I have processed the roosters from straight-run orders. I did cull a hen that I was quite fond of, and it really disturbed me. I think I'll take her in to the vet to be euthanized and ask him about the problems the birds are exhibiting.

I just don't think it is Mareks.

 

[LoneStarHen]

Ugh. Sorry about your hen. I have been lucky with my layers and not had any big problems with egg binding and other stuff.

 

[jajeanpierre]

Ugh. Sorry about your hen. I have been lucky with my layers and not had any big problems with egg binding and other stuff.

I broke down and took the hen in to be euthanized. This is not the one with the neurological issues, but one that has some sort of fluid build up caused, I believe, from laying internally. I'll have a look inside her later today. I've culled cockerels without the grief of the one time I culled a much loved hen that was in real trouble. I just didn't have the backbone to cull this hen so paid the vet to do it for me.

I spoke to the vet about the neurological issues I was seeing. He told me that the greenish/yellowish urates (that both my birds had) were indicative of some sort of assault to the liver. If the liver is not functioning, the nitrogen (nitrates? can't remember exactly what he said) would rise in the central nervous system fluid, causing neurological issues. He said it wasn't Mareks--they didn't recover from Mareks. It could have been an infectious agent or something they ate.

My treatment of fluids for the downed chick was correct. My hen is still having issues and I'll just keep watching her. No other chickens are affected. I didn't quarantine because all my chickens were exposed to the sick ones, so quarantining would have been just a bit too late.

My vet wanted to be a poultry pathologist during university, but decided he liked chickens too much to only deal with dead ones so he became an avian vet. He knows his poultry.