Urgent!!! Awful mite infestation killed three hens while we were on vacation! WHAT DO I DO?

[M Brennen]

I responded with a sad face and now I feel I have to explain it. It was not meant in a judgmental way, but to express sympathy that you had to deal with a sick bird in your flock and it had such an unfortunate outcome. Having read a few of these threads, it seems that sometimes a bird has an underlying issue that they successfully hide from their owners, but the parasites are not fooled and they take over. The rest of the flock, being in good health with good immune systems, are not attacked. That's just my opinion anyway.

I totally think this was the issue with my bird. She had a sour type crop and I expelled it a few times. I gave her Monistat for that as well. Her droppings were very off and when it arched matching droppings saw where similar droppings were in a cancerous bird that was euthanized. Then the mites took hold with a vengeance and she was down to nothing and very weak. In the end, Euthanasia was the most humane thing to do.

 

[affacat]

I responded with a sad face and now I feel I have to explain it. It was not meant in a judgmental way, but to express sympathy that you had to deal with a sick bird in your flock and it had such an unfortunate outcome. Having read a few of these threads, it seems that sometimes a bird has an underlying issue that they successfully hide from their owners, but the parasites are not fooled and they take over. The rest of the flock, being in good health with good immune systems, are not attacked. That's just my opinion anyway.

I think that is a solid take. The parasites might not actively be searching out the weakest, but they certainly will expand faster once they find a weak target. Animals hide pain because it's often a death sentence in the wild for many reasons (predators go after injured/slow prey, getting left behind, limited resources, etc).

 

[BigBlueHen53]

Agreed. Although chickens bring us such joy, the price we pay for enjoying them so much is coming to know their time with us is sometimes far too short.