The lady at TSC croaked when I told her what i was gonna use the agri-mectin for. I did start her on Sulmet 2 days ago. She is standing in a large dog crate most of the day. She sits from time to time but does not put her head down anymore that i have seen. She still seems off balance I put the earth in pine shavings in her cage and sprinkled a small amount on her food. She is still not eating much but drinking. She is thin her feathers make her look quite large though. She does not seem tons better, but is not any worse either this has been going on forever it seems. I will keep monitoring her. I let the other hen out and an hour later she was sneezing again and open mouth breathing which I had not seen since day two of her being confined. Would I be dealing with an outbreak by now with these 2 hens if it were flock threatening like the above poster said? I observed her tonight eating and was not open mouth breathing but sneezing from time to time. I began to get a "wrinkled" egg last week every 3 or 4 days. I read about IB doing that...maybe that was what they had and are over it now? This is much harder than I thought. I had chickens as pets when I was young. A huge RIR that I dearly loved and had for 5 years and 2 little bantys for 2 or 3 years and never had any problems.
Lol, a lot of people will croak for the things we use on our chickens. It's even funnier when you walk into
Walmart and mention you are looking for a syringe and once they ask what for you tell them "To worm chickens with" (if I had seen them at
TSC I would have bought one before stopping at
walmart). But in reality, the cattle wormer is not such a bad thing; I've read dosages from people using as much as 1/2 a ml on birds (that is a dosage for 11 pounds) and it having no ill effect. I don't use that much though, like I said, I use a eyedropper for the Ivomec and a syringe for the Safeguard. Using a eye dropper I just use simply one drop which was told by me to cover about 2 pounds but it worked on birds even up to about 9 pounds (Shamo cock weighed 9lbs 6oz last I weighed).
Hopefully the Diamaceous Earth will do, I have heard of a lot of people that use it, I just never have so can't answer a lot on the efficiency of it. Her being off-balance is probably due to her being so malnourished, I imagine if it were a serious disease which typically causes said symptoms she would have gotten worse by now, died, or passed it on to other birds. The wrinkled/thin egg shells could be a calcium deficiency which could come from worms effecting the absorption of calcium, it can also be a sign of stress which would be brought on by the sickness/possibly other things.
On the separation: The hen was quarantined but odds are they all use the same water source, which is one of the main ways to spread disease. Unless the water has been changed then odds are since she had probably dranken out of it all of the flock has been exposed/continues to be exposed.
Disease comes around every now and then even in the best of environments, but thankfully for most people it doesn't happen much. This year I have had one of the biggest bouts with fleas (dogs) and lice I have seen in years, I suppose due to the warm weather we had all winter and this year. I even had a small outbreak of avian pox there for a little bit on some birds (mainly the Leghorns I ordered from the hatchery, didn't effect the games as badly and I believe only one Kraieköppe picked it up and all he had was one dot) which I had not seen for I would say; easily about 7-8 years or so. Comes from mosquitoes, so other than vaccinating there isn't much you can do about that disease if it shows; I don't vaccinate for anything as I believe in breeding for resistance. Some birds will have stronger immune systems just as people, so say even if the two hens had Mareks (I don't believe they do) and the rest of the flock didn't catch it, then personally I wouldn't be too concerned as it only took care of the ones which were weak/would have passed along weak offspring. The rest are likely to produce offspring which don't catch Mareks (if Mareks was the case; this can apply to other diseases as well).
From the description though and the amount of time that has elapsed, I still think a possible worm infestation could be your biggest concern just by reading the description.
God bless,
Daniel.
