Tennessee Great Granny
Chirping
- Mar 24, 2022
- 87
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I've had to deal with vent gleet with 2 hens out of about 50. It's messy but your lil girls are suffering and it's EZ-PZ OTC (over the counter) help you can render. One had it pretty bad and the other was very early stages. You need to distinguish between H5N1 Bird flu because of the lethargy (plus vent discharge). The telltale sign it is bird flu and not another bird disease is bird flu renders highlighter pen GREEN stool. And they don't just have lethargy they have tremors and later in the dying process they can't even keep their balance. With vent gleet their bottoms are really messy and all that needs to be cleaned up. There are OTC medications you can use which will help soothe your lil' girls bottoms and get them on the road to recovery. You'll need tight fitting nitrile gloves because you need to clean all that yuck off of their bottom and put a small amount of medicine inside their vent. Go to dollar general and buy the cheapest yeast cream for women (not the one day stuff but the 7 day treatment miconizole 7 is good for a couple birds!). It's located in the feminine products aisle. Then go to the first aid aisle and get a tube of 1 % hydrocortisone cream. Buy a small bag of Epsom salts. Have a clean pair of blunt tipped scissors handy. I got this treatment from a veterinary student from the UK. It is effective and the bird(s) heal(s) completely in a few days. Your bird needs to soak her bottom in an Epsom salts bath to soften all that yucky stuff up. I use a tote placed inside of my bathtub that I have cleaned and very thoroughly rinsed (to remove detergents etc.). Bird's normal temps run about 100 degrees to our 98 or 99 degrees. They need bathtub warm water which is between 104 to 105 degrees. The bird will shiver if its too cold and really complain and fight if it's too hot. I use about 1/4 cup of the Epsom salts. It's soothing to their sore bottom as it softens and loosens the crusty junk. Use your gloved fingers to comb out the stuck on fecal materials and yeast drainage. Vent gleet is the bird version of a vaginal yeast infection. Super stubborn cases can be treated with oral fluconazole but that is prescription only and spendy. Good luck finding a vet who treats chickens. After the bird is completely clean I towel her dry and even use a hair dryer if it's still cold out. She needs to be completely dry so she doesn't get cold stressed when adding her back to the group. The next part works best if someone else is holding the chicken and watch out for shooting feces because this next part can trigger them to evacuate their cloaca. Using your fingertip from the end of the tip to the first fold line of your finger squeeze a strip of yeast cream onto your finger and work it inside of the vent. Never go more than the tip of the finger deep. You do not want to injure their egg making organs. Its okay to get the cream outside of the vent, it actually will help any redness to heal. Then once the yeast cream is done do a second application use the same or a little smaller amount of 1% hydrocortisone cream. A small amount inside and some outside. This will help their painful redness heal faster. Then I trim all feathers around their vent with blunt tipped scissors (bandage scissors work well) to keep as much discharge off of their bottoms as possible. In the UK they often mix the creams together and include a little bit of lidocaine. In the US lidocaine is considered toxic to poultry and I don't know how they rationalize using it in the UK. I don't use it at all on my birds. Lidocaine can affect the heart and the heartrate. it is used in cardiac codes in advance cardiac life support on humans. Improper dosing can stop any heart. Chickens are tiny, I suspect they'd be extra sensitive to it. I mention it in case someone finds chicken remedies from the UK, because our nation does not practice that as far as I know- or I'd leave it to a vet. Of my two chickens that had vent gleet the one with early vent gleet only needed two treatments and the other one I probably could have stopped on day 4 but I did one extra day because she was so bad off in the beginning. I was early into raising chickens and it took me some time to figure out what was going on with the gals. Now if they have any sign of a dirty bum I check for vent gleet. So far the only thing they have needed is just a really good dirt bath. I hope this helps. There used to be a number of videos on You-tube in treating vent gleet. So none of us are alone in dealing with this. BTW after bathing in Epsom salts I dump the dirty water down the toilet or outside away from where people and pets walk. I then clean the tote with kitchen and bath cleaner with bleach rinsing extremely well afterwards so no residue cleaner is in the tote and the tote is disinfected well. I hope this response helps. Its an easy fix and cheaper than any vet would charge it just takes a little time. Birds love yogurt, and the probiotics of giving all of them a treat of a big tub of it can help stop more birds from getting vent gleet. I take their morning feed and mix it thoroughly with the yogurt from time to time. It's good for my family as a treat and also good for my pets too!
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