Urgent! Gapeworm, respiratory illness, or throat obstruction?

[Lk2001]

Hi everyone,

I have a 5 and a half month old Welsummer, Penelope, who has been sneezing for a couple weeks. I noticed she makes a high-pitched sneezing noise once every few minutes but she continued to act normally so I didn't think much of it. However, she is now open-mouth breathing often and walking slowly. She isn't sticking with her friends. I tried to feed her a couple grapes last night and she pecked at them but left them whole on the ground. This morning I gave her some mealworms - she would eat a few and then breathe through her mouth for a few seconds, like she was struggling to get the food down. As far as I can tell, she doesn't have anything wrong with her eyes or nose that I can see.

At first I thought she had gapeworm but after doing more research, it seems like gapeworm is quite rare. I purchased VetRX this morning as well as Durastat to put in their water. Right now, she is laying outside by herself. Please help!

 

[Eggcessive]

It sounds a bit like infectious bronchitis virus, but I would look at your ventilation in your coop, and make sure things are dry and fresh. Mold, dust, and poor ventilation can increase the chances of respiratory diseases. Have you added any new birds to the flock recently? IB virus, if that is what you are seeing usually spreads to other flock members, and lasts about a month. Hens may lay wrinkled egg shells or thin whites. It won’t hurt to worm your flock with SafeGuard liquid goat wormer 1/4 ml per pound of weight for 5 consecutive days. A 5 pound hen would get 1.25 ml, and I would pull her wattles down, give a little at a time, release the wattles to let let her swallow, and repeat.

 

[metarachel]

It sounds a bit like infectious bronchitis virus, but I would look at your ventilation in your coop, and make sure things are dry and fresh. Mold, dust, and poor ventilation can increase the chances of respiratory diseases. Have you added any new birds to the flock recently? IB virus, if that is what you are seeing usually spreads to other flock members, and lasts about a month. Hens may lay wrinkled egg shells or thin whites. It won’t hurt to worm your flock with SafeGuard liquid goat wormer 1/4 ml per pound of weight for 5 consecutive days. A 5 pound hen would get 1.25 ml, and I would pull her wattles down, give a little at a time, release the wattles to let let her swallow, and repeat.

My hen is doing the same thing. It's been about three weeks now. She did have sour crop but we treated for that and it's fine now. We treated the whole flock with safeguard and she seemed to do a lot better about two days in but then went back to how she was before. We're now two days post-treatment and she's still making tons of noise. She's got no discharge from her eyes/nose/mouth, and none of the other hens are showing any symptoms. Could it be bronchitis where she's the only one out of 29 who got it, maybe because she was weak first from the sour crop? Ventilation is excellent.