URGENT!!!! Red Star hen with large, red crop, foamy vent, etc... Help!

[threehorses]

Please continue to ask your questions here.

Electrolytes are minerals and whatnot that are usually in balance in the blood. They're required to be in balance because they run things like the heart, etc.

They can get out of balance if a bird is anemic, or dehydrated, or has a lot of diarrhea.

Diarrhea causes a bird to pass excessive amounts of liquid and electrolytes. So you replace them so that the bird's blood is in balance.

(Think of atheletes drinking Gatorade - gatorade is an appropriate electrolyte replacement drink for humans... not so much for poultry except in an emergency.

Electrolytes come in a package for poultry called "poultry vitamins/minerals/electrolytes". Use as per the package's directions.

For the time being, for a day or so, you can use pedialyte (electrolytes for babies) as their sole source of water, or a little gatorade. But you don't want to 'pinch pennies' and use gatorade long term because it contains stuff that aren't appropriate for birds.

Again - please - any things you have wrong with your bird, ask them here. Putting extra posts on the board makes extra work for those of us who are trying hard to help you. We are not staff, we are not paid, we are volunteers doing this for the sheer love of poultry and poultry owners.

Updating THIS post notifies us that you have a new question and we're all waiting to answer your questions. so please help us to not have to search for your posts. We just cannot. It's not possible. Help us by asking us here and you'll get much better help that way! I promise.

 

[threehorses]

In your other post, you wrote:
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We noticed that some of our chickens(such as our RIR rooster) have blood on their droppings once and a while. Our RIR rooster, Marty, acts normal and healthy and he eats cracked corn, pellets, and (along with the hens) layer mash. He also eats other extra stuff like bread and he free ranges with his hens about everyday, all day.

Any thoughts?
Thanks! smile
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The blood is from the worms. Worms irritate the digestive tract and ceca (the two blind pouches off of the intestines near the end of the digestive tract) til the point where the chickens bleed. Adult birds rarely have coccidiosis (tho it's possible), but in this case I'd say its' clearly roundworms. Hope this helps.

 

[77horses]

Quote:
Thanks! And we are positive it's roundworms, since we've seen them and they match up to the images that I found online.


Ugh right now is a bad time for our chickens; they ALL have lice AND most have roundworms!

Thanks everyone for answering my questions.

And sorry about the other threads; I will post any more related questions here.
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Now this may or may not be related to the worms, but just to be safe, here's another question:

One of our Red Star hens, named Linda, has been limping on one of her legs lately(her right one to be exact). She also has lice and most likely roundworms(since she shares a coop with the other wormy birds). She has had no recent injuries or anything that I know of and both legs look normal, except for that on the leg she's limping on, her spur has gotten WAY bigger than the other spur on her other leg!

It's not red, swollen, bleeding, etc. or anything like that, it just got bigger. Looks kinda like when we have a young rooster and his spurs are small stubs at first. The other spur that she has is basically just a small bump that is barely noticeable. Any thoughts? Could this be related to the worms or lice?
Also, her spur is still bigger than usual today but she isn't limping anymore.
Thanks!

 

[77horses]

So we will dust ALL of the chickens as soon as possible and get the Wazine from our local feed stores(if they have any). What's bad is that I'm at my mom's house and my dad(he has the chickens) is over an hour away so I can't be there to help him with them. I can just call him to tell him info that you guys are giving me.

So after we dust all the chickens with the stronger mite/lice powder and get the Wazine to give to them, where should we go from there? Should we monitor their droppings, check to make sure lice are gone, etc.? Also, how much Wazine, by the way, should we give to our chickens? Is it OK for our 2+ month old chickens to have it? If we include the 2+ month olds, we have 13 chickens and they drink out of about 1 gallon waterers...how much Wazine should we put in the waterers and how long do we give it to them?
Thanks and sorry about all the questions!

I just hate it that all of our chickens, except for one chick that is still in the broody box, have lice and/or worms.

 

[77horses]

OK last questions for now, I promise:

I noticed that when I pick up Cinnamon, my Red Star hen, while I'm holding her, she will sometimes squat her butt down as if she's going to poop. It's strange; about every time I pick her up, she will stiffen up and lean her butt down like she's trying to poop and sometimes she does poop watery-like droppings. Could this be related to the worms?
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Sometimes, most often Cinnamon my Red Star hen, our chickens will not lay their egg in the morning like they usually do. For Cinnamon,later in the day, she will become very slow and tired-acting very suddenly. If she's free ranging or in her coop run, she will just stand around or will lay down on the ground, not really paying attention to anything or pecking the ground for bugs like the rest. Eventually, she will lay her egg finally and go right back to being more active.
Is this something that normally happens when a hen for some reason doesn't lay her egg on time?
~all of our chickens eat cracked corn, layers mash, layer pellets, bugs and grass while free ranging, etc.~
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Is it bad to eat eggs from hens that have roundworms? I'm worried that we shouldn't eat the eggs or give them to our neighbors like we usually do. Could we risk getting the worms?

Thanks!

 

[threehorses]

Quote:
On the Wazine, if it's Wazine 17 (17% piperazine for cattle/swine) then you use 1 ounce (2 tablespoons) per gallon of water as their sole source of water for 1 day. Then repeat again in 2-4 weeks for birds under 4 weeks, or use one of the more broad spectrum wormers instead to kill larva and really worm them. Update this thread then as I'll be subscribed and we'll do dosages for whichever wormer you can get them. Or talk about which you can get and which to choose etc. If I don't answer, them PM me or email me. (Sometimes I get bumped off of subscribe on a thread and dont' know it).

Hold off on worming the babies til they're a few weeks old at least. We'll talk about them then.

Yes, monitor droppings, watch them carefully, redust in 7 days and again in another 7 days. IF you can, weigh them so you can compare in 2 weeks. That's always handy - tho not necessary.

don't worry about the questions - really that's what the board is for. It just helps to have them all in once place because that way we don't miss any clues to solving the puzzle. All things are interrelated in a flock... even if they don't seem to be.

I think you'll find once the lice are eliminated, that the health of your flock will improve. I do hope so.

Oh and give yogurt on the day of the worming. Actually your babies can get it weekly through the "starter" weeks (1-8 weeks) and then weekly to occassionally as they are older and healthy. That really helps them thrive.

On your Cinnamon question, what she's doing is she's being submissive to you - like she wound a rooster. It's behavioral. Also on her being lethargic and that egg, I'd suspect that she's on the verge of egg binding. Is she gettting laying pellets as most of her feed? If you're not giving her oyster shell, do for sure give it to her and make sure it's stirred up and fresh weekly. Reduce the cracked corn to less than a tenth of the diet; the extra phosphorus in grains bind with calcium and cause problems like this.

And as for eggs from wormy hens - I could never do it. Candle the eggs to see if any worms make it into them. I personally don't choose to. But worms aren't unheard of in eggs.

 

[77horses]

On your Cinnamon question, what she's doing is she's being submissive to you - like she wound a rooster. It's behavioral. Also on her being lethargic and that egg, I'd suspect that she's on the verge of egg binding. Is she gettting laying pellets as most of her feed? If you're not giving her oyster shell, do for sure give it to her and make sure it's stirred up and fresh weekly. Reduce the cracked corn to less than a tenth of the diet; the extra phosphorus in grains bind with calcium and cause problems like this.

All of the chickens are fed mostly layer pellets and layer mash, with some cracked corn mixed in. Where can we get oyster shell?​

 

[77horses]

And as for eggs from wormy hens - I could never do it. Candle the eggs to see if any worms make it into them. I personally don't choose to. But worms aren't unheard of in eggs.

We haven't seen any worms in the eggs so far.
We incubate some of the eggs from these same chickens, so if any worms got into the eggs, could it possibly interfere with the chick developing? Just a thought.

 

[threehorses]

Quote:
OK that sounds like mostly layer. Good. Oyster shell - you have some options. You can get a small bag at TSC and other stores for under $10 (it's very small but works well for a small flock) to at least get some to her. The benefit is that it's crushed oyster shell and a lot of it has a flour-like consistency. You can use that flour and mix it in with feed for a couple of days to get their calcium up. Then just sprinkle some corn on the oyster shell to get them to see it. I put mine in a little two-hole bowl that I got at the dollar store that is a cat feeder. It doesn't tip and I put oyster shell in one side, granite grit in the other side. You can also mix them - hens know which is which. I just like to keep mine separate in case I need to grab up any of the floury dust. You can also get it at feedstores in very large bags - I dont' know how large your flock is.

We've managed on a small bag this last time for several hens, laying and new layers. (The last oyster shell I got was pelleted - I do not recommend it - be sure to ask for crushed so it looks like crushed oyster shells and has the flour).

As for the worms and eggs, it probably would as worms would have bacteria - bacteria would taint the eggs. But candle your eggs at 5 and 14 days at least anyway because any 'baddies' need to come out so that they don't ruin the good eggs. You'll see a worm in them.

If they do anything, they're more apt to disallow the breeding hens from putting enough nutrition in the egg to allow the babies to live to hatch and thrive. that's the more common issue.

 

[77horses]

Large roundworms in chicken eggs:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/pagerender.fcgi?artid=1585788&pageindex=1
I've never seen anything in the eggs so far. But would it affect humans if a worm or the eggs were in a chicken egg, and someone didn't know and they cooked the egg and ate it? Wouldn't it kill the worm or eggs when you cooked the egg?
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I don't know how Penny is doing this morning. I still need to call my dad and ask him if her crop has gotten smaller. I told him to give them less cracked corn and no DE today.


We have 2 chicken coops. We have 4 Red Star hens(including Penny) and a RIR rooster in one coop, and a Splash Cochin rooster, 1 Cochin Bantam pullet, 2 Buff Orp hens, 1 Amer. pullet, and three 2+ month old chicks. I don't think that they have the worms, since they don't share a coop with the Red Stars and RIR. But we've been feeding them some DE everyday just in case, and to prevent them from getting the worms. It would be OK for us to keep feeding the DE to them, since they don't have any bloody droppings or worms in their droppings and the DE wouldn't irritate their intestines like you said it would to the wormy chickens, right?

Thanks!