Wet and Dry Fowl Pox - Graphic Pictures of Pus and Scabs

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IMPRESSIVE REVERSAL OF FOWL POX WITH ORAL LIPOSOMAL VITAMIN C
Aloha, I just had a breakthrough with fowl pox that seemed on the scale of a miracle to me.... The subject was a six week old, mixed jungle fowl female, a pretty bird with sort of a mille fleur effect on her feathers.

Last week I was reading, Curing the Incurable by Thomas Levy, MD, about the amazing capability of vitamin C to deal with viral and bacterial infections and inflammation. I read how pioneering doctors used and reported on intravenous Vitamin C curing viral and bacterial diseases in humans from the late 1940s. (such as polio) I can't even think why the medical profession didn't embrace it. Since 2004, Livon Labs has produced a liposomal type of Vitamin C that allows large doses of oral Vitamin C to be fully bioavailable without being blocked by the digestive system.

Then, the chick presented with pox. I had some liposomal Vitamin C on hand, so I decided to do my own experiment. We live in a wet part of Hawaii and sometimes have a lot of mosquitoes. I understand that fowl pox is spread by mosquitoes. I have had vaccinated chicks in a screened cage get fowl pox, and in my location the survival rate of chicks with pox is about 25% with the best supportive care I can provide. The infected chicks are pitiful. The lesions cluster on and around the eye area, usually closing the eyes entirely. Lesions form around the ears and mouth sometimes blocking the chicks throat so they cannot swallow. It's pitiful. If the chicks live they go through an absolutely miserable couple of weeks and taking care of them is quite labor intensive..

BUT, I think that's all over now with this new treatment modality...
With the chick in question, at the time I started treatment in the morning, lesions had just formed over each eye and the eyes were effectively becoming glued shut. The chick had stopped eating. I made up a solution of about 10 ml, 50% liposomal Vitamin C from the packet, in water. I delivered the mixture into the chick's crop with a stainless crop feeder. I made the chick comfortable in a warmed cage. I repeated this procedure every 12 hours for 2 days. By the second day, the lesions over the eyes had not increased in size and no additional lesions had formed. On the third day, one of the lesions had fallen off and there was a small clean wound on the eye lid and I was able to gently pull the skin above and below the eye to open it. The other lesion was still in place but I was able to open that eye also. By the morning of the third day, the remaining lesion was coming off and the chick was beginning to eat and drink by herself. There were no additional lesions. It is now the fourth day and the chick is under observation but seems to be recovered. she is eating, drinking and grooming herself. The comparison between two weeks of misery for the bird and nursing care for me, versus 2-3 days is a great improvement. I was so pleased that I emailed Dr. Levy to tell him of the success of the treatment that came about because I read his book. He graciously replied.

Added to the success with the chick, it happened that a normally healthy adult Rhode Island Red hen was down and looking poorly. When I examined her to see what was going on I found that she had an infection down inside her throat. There was a mass of that solid yellow pus down in there. She couldn't swallow and she was having trouble breathing. I dug around down her throat to try and clear enough material out of her throat to help her breathe. It was pretty gory and disgusting and I worried that I was stressing her out, but she hung with me. I decided to try the liposomal Vitamin C with her also. I couldn't get a catheter down her throat so I decided to medicate and hydrate her by enema. I mixed Vitamin C and honey with slightly warmed water and put it in a 60 ml syringe which I held to her vent and slowly inserted. I added another 60 ml of the mixture and put her in the cage to keep the sick chick company. I repeated the enema insertions every twelve hours.. The next day, the hen was alert and could stand up. It is now day four and the hen is bright eyed, alert and she is no longer wheezing, and she is picking at stuff in the cage.. She is mostly resting but has no trouble standing. The infection material in her throat is still there. It is hard to see but the material may be disintegrating and dislodging. Time will tell.

Liposomal Vitamin C is not cheap. It is $1 per 1000 mg pouch, but that pouch is much more bio-available that the normal Vitamin C pill, and not destroyed by the digestive system. If you are treating a sick chicken, you may not be putting a price on your own time nursing them. My chickens deliver eggs but they are pets and very entertaining, but for someone with economic interest in their chickens, or trying to raise the birds organically for consumption or eggs, Vitamin C treatment of illness should be considered.

Also, for those who don't know. Per Wikipedia, "Most animals make their own vitamin C. Some mammals cannot. Those that cannot include the main suborder of primates, the Haplorrhini: tarsiers, monkeys and apes, including human beings. Others are bats, capybaras and guinea pigs." Even animals who produce their own Vitamin C, may not have enough when they are fighting a viral or bacterial infection or a serious inflammation.
 
You stated that vaccinated chicks in a screened cage got fowl pox; that's because the vaccination didnt take, or the person giving it didnt know what they were doing while giving it, or it was a different strain...such as canary pox or pigeon pox. Most chicks survive fowl pox unless it's wet pox in which they starve to death.
You stated you made a mixture for a sick chick and gave it the mixture every 12 hours for 2 days, what about the other sick chicks you mentioned?. Since you had many chicks that had fowl pox, looks like it would be time consuming to dose all of them every 12 hours for two days to me. If you had compentently given fowl pox vaccinations in the first place, which are much cheaper and effective, you wouldnt have spent so much time administering the product you mentioned.
I'm sure avian interests would make a mint with this fowl pox cure. I wonder why it isnt sold by TSC, Jeffers, Jedd's, feed stores, avian vets etc...?
 
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Clarification To dawg53:
My previous cases of fowl pox in chicks were in the past, not the current situation.
I really don't know if the fowl pox in our area is the dry or wet type. The commercial hatchery on island informed me that their vaccination is not 100% effective and that chicks do not develop immunity from the vaccination for a period of time. The worst outbreak I ever had was of hatchery vaccinated chicks in a screened cage. My vaccinations of chicks hatched on my premises seem to be equally as effective as the hatchery vaccinations.

With regard to the excessive time to dose chicks; with a crop feeder I can do it very quickly and with this therapy, intensive care does not have to be given to each chick for many days. Obviously, I would rather keep the chicks healthy in the first place, which might suggest that supplementing vitamin C could help.. I don't know, but I might try it. One could play with dosages to get the cost per chick down.

The question as to why Vitamin C is not sold as a cure for fowl pox in chickens, is not one I can answer. In his book, Curing the Incurable, Dr. Thomas Levy tries to explain how the medical profession seems to resist dramatically effective new therapeutics which don't involve big profits for drug companies.

After reading Dr. Levy's book I thought it would be interesting to test if a viral chicken disease would respond to Vitamin C. It did, and I thought it was worth it. I'm just trying to contribute to a positive dialog that might help someone. People would have to decide for themselves if it worked for them and their birds and was worth it.

Hey, I could be wrong but I found it pretty hard to be unimpressed that the pox lesions which formed over the test chick's eyes fell off within 3 days leaving only minor clean wounds which healed in just a few days.
 
Giving vit C probably won't hurt, but I can tell you that will all of the pox I had here last year it would have been impossible to tell how helpful it was as many of my birds recovered in a few days *without* treatment just like you say yours did with vit C. FYI, the birds I mention in this thread were the most severely affected... didn't bother mentioning he mildly affected ones.

-Kathy
 
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Thank you for this volley of information. I treated my fowl pox-silkie with just iodine. It was actually betadine, which is iodine but either more or less concentrated. I even did the inside of her mouth. the poor thing hated the taste but it didn't have any ill effect on her organs etc. She is completely cured. I kept her isolated from others for a month and put her back in with them after that. They have not come down with pox.
The problem I have now is that NONE of my chickens are laying at all. It is spring here in GA, 70 degrees, and at this time of year they are laying their heads off. What could be wrong? One of my chickens is 4 month old, another a year old, the others are three years old. Some may be too old to lay but what about the others? There is a rooster in there too. Of course I assume he isn't causing any problem. They hens are active, bright, healthy , all eating and running around. I feed 1 quart of feed for five birds every day plus oyster shell. Any suggestions? Thanks!
 
Thank you for this volley of information. I treated my fowl pox-silkie with just iodine. It was actually betadine, which is iodine but either more or less concentrated. I even did the inside of her mouth. the poor thing hated the taste but it didn't have any ill effect on her organs etc. She is completely cured. I kept her isolated from others for a month and put her back in with them after that. They have not come down with pox.
The problem I have now is that NONE of my chickens are laying at all. It is spring here in GA, 70 degrees, and at this time of year they are laying their heads off. What could be wrong? One of my chickens is 4 month old, another a year old, the others are three years old. Some may be too old to lay but what about the others? There is a rooster in there too. Of course I assume he isn't causing any problem. They hens are active, bright, healthy , all eating and running around. I feed 1 quart of feed for five birds every day plus oyster shell. Any suggestions? Thanks!

Fowl pox can cause birds to slow laying eggs but should pick up after their bout with the disease. Give it time, they'll start laying when they're ready.
 
so glad eggcessive gave me the link to this thread, we currently have an outbreak of 'pox' (not sure if its wet or dry? what is the difference?) i'll get some photos up later. so far we have 9 hens in quarantine, 2 dead and theres 79 more chickens in the field (as well as 12 geese, 30 ducks and 7 turkeys) that i'm really hoping dont get infected!
as soon as i see a 'suspected' infected bird i put it straight in quarantine, but we have millions of mosquitos here (we live on the bank of a river) and an outbreak of red blood lice so i'm really fighting it here!
 
so glad eggcessive gave me the link to this thread, we currently have an outbreak of 'pox' (not sure if its wet or dry? what is the difference?) i'll get some photos up later. so far we have 9 hens in quarantine, 2 dead and theres 79 more chickens in the field (as well as 12 geese, 30 ducks and 7 turkeys) that i'm really hoping dont get infected!
as soon as i see a 'suspected' infected bird i put it straight in quarantine, but we have millions of mosquitos here (we live on the bank of a river) and an outbreak of red blood lice so i'm really fighting it here!
This link has all of the pictures in this thread:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/818895/lightbox/

-Kathy
 

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