Three chickens with runny noses and sneezing in the last week - should I treat them all?

[pennyparty]

Argh. More problems with my new flock!!

I got 10 pullets in the beginning on January all between 9-12 weeks of age. 5 Golden sexlinks, 3 EE's, and 2 barred rocks.
The day after delivery one of the barred rocks appeared droopy, fluffed up, and was keeping one of her eyes closed. I watched closely for a week and she seemed to recover so I chalked it up to relocation stress (which it still could be).

Two weeks ago one of my EE's went lame. The flock stripped her of her back feathers, etc. I isolated her and gave her tetracycline - that's another thread entirely. Last week my other two EE's developed runny noses and sneezing and one had a bubbly eye (no gunky discharge, just clear bubbles when I massaged her crop). No funky smell, no change in appetite, no bad poops - everything else normal.

I decided to medicate all three EE's with Tylan 50 injectable for 5 days. They all improved.

Today I noticed that one of my barred rocks has a snotty nose!!!

SO. Here is my question. I think they will start laying in the next month or so.

Should I just treat them all with Tylan and get it over with? Or should I just keep isolating them as they become symptomatic? Seems like the cycle would be easier to break if I just treated them all.

Please advise.

I feed them organic chick grower, supplement their water with vitamins and organic ACV.

 

[cafarmgirl]

Whatever this is will slowly spread to all of them but I would only treat them as they begin to show symptoms rather then give anitbiotic's to well birds. There will be no breaking this cycle. Whatever it is they have, they will remain carriers even after they recover and it will most likely continue to pop up now and then, especially when they are stressed for any reason. This is why many people do not treat sick birds but will cull and start over. That is not an option for everyone.

It would be very helpful to you to know exactly what you are dealing with. If one shoud die I'd highly suggest a necropsy by a state lab. A vet who see's chickens can also do some testing on a live bird to try to diagnose what's going on. Some of these diseases are a little easier to manage then others and knowing what you are dealing with would help a lot.

 

[pennyparty]

Thank you for your reply
Yes - I don't think I want to get into a cycle of medicating them constantly so I think I'm just going to let this thing run it's course and see what happens. Maybe the stronger hens will have no problem and natural selection will do it's thing. I will support them nutritionally and otherwise and see what happens. It's just so frustrating because I had a flock of 7 for over two years just before I got this batch and never had a single problem! I would love to take one to a vet but it's hard to justify the expense and I'm not sure which one I would choose to take in if none of them die from this... but I suppose if it's contagious they would all have it and any chicken tested would be able to tell us what's going on. There is a vet here in Los Angeles who is very knowledgable about chickens that the feed store recommended, I might consult him depending on what else develops.

I have a closed flock and planned on keeping them for two years and then giving them to a family who processes them for meat (which is what I did with my last hens). I don't have a rooster so I won't be giving away eggs for hatching, etc. so I'm not worried about spreading this around.

 

[cafarmgirl]

Your welcome. We've been down that road here and it's not fun. We had an outbreak 2 1/2 years ago that turned out to be infectious bronchitis. I had my avain vet run some tests and cultures etc. to get a diagnosis. We treated them all with antibiotic's as they came down with it, they all survived and have been fine ever since. Some of these disease are harder to manage in terms of how often they seem to return. Pneumonia is a very common complication with any type of respiratory disease so without treatment the mortality may be higher. Good luck with your birds!