That is a really great article! Especially since they included pictures. Not nosy at all! I appreciate your thoughts! Ms. Pretty didn’t have the little white bumps…it was more like random tumors. I looked all over her skin and it was only around her head like swollen bites or something like that. She was legit ill, fluffed up, no appetite, and I found her half dead in the run with her face half pecked off by the others
it was my first chicken issue and I was very traumatized by it all so I didn’t really pay close attention to the end.
All of the birds presenting with paralysis of some sort have come from the same coop and they’ve all been Polish chickens or lavender colored chickens. They all had ravenous appetites but lost weight, and none of them seemed sick or fluffed up, just all the sudden couldn’t stand.
Nohope is probably the most confusing of the deaths, because he shows no outward signs of illness anymore. He is 10 months old, and vaxxed for Mycoplasma gallispticum, but nothing else. If I go back to November when he first showed signs of issues, he had a wet, mucousy mouth, runny nose, yellow crap in his beak I was anble to remove, and pox on his comb. This all came after big rain storms that left things wet and muddy. He was given Amoxicillin first for 10 days, then Veta-all in 1, which has Doxycycline, Ronidazole, Enrofloxacin, and Diclaziril. He also got Myconazole in case it was yeast, anlong with a yeast essential oils drop, colloidal silver, poultry cell, forsythia extract and activated charcoal, B-Complex and Vitamin E. He had normal to greenish poo, and seemed to be walking precariously. From the time he was very young, I would see him eat sitting on the ground. He also walked a bit funny/stiffly in comparison to other chickens. Nothing extreme, just my eye picking up a slight difference.
Anyway, after 2 weeks of meds, the mucousy mouth went away, the runny nose, the pox…he was eating and drinking completely normal but his walking was getting progressively worse. He went from standing to sitting more, then getting around using his legs and wings, then moving only when he reallllly wanted to, then eventually falling forward when trying to walk and get around. He has always had full strength and range of both legs, juts cannot stand on them. He can launch himself off the coach with his legs and he’s sooo strong I can barely hold him when he gets out of the sink bath. He has always had a healthy appetite, still to today eats and drinks…he has no more outward signs he’s sick except the no walking and his comb is getting progressively bluer and floppy and now his head sits off to the side of his body. His poops are greenish but normal but he has occasional black tar like poops that stink something AWFUL. Baths to clean him up massively stress him out and it takes hours for him to recover. He has never been sick until November, but he has always walked a bit funny. All of the male Polish went thru something similar except Spider, my only strong and healthy Polish to survive. Spider has been outside since day 2 and was raised in the Death Coop. The pullets went from fine to sick and dead within 48 hours. I would have assumed Mareks long ago based on the Polish pullets, except that I have had a bunch of chickens in that coop and only these chickens have shown ANY signs of issues and died. It has served as my grow out coop and broody Silkie coop, so I’ve had chicks born in it and raised by my broody silkies, teenagers, new birds, and old birds. All the baby chicks that weren’t Polish or lavender have grown up fine, symptom free, healthy and are now laying eggs. All the lavender birds and polish except one have gotten sick and died. Asha my Lav Orp pullet and two of the Polish boys that died had a black skin crust under their wings and down their leg that looked very much like gangrenous dermatitis and I treated it that way. This cleared up with fungicide and iodine baths. Asha was in that coop with a black Silkie and two other Orpington pullets two weeks younger—they are chocolate and mauve—and all vaxxed for MG—Asha and the Silkie for MG and Mareks. The Silkie and two Orps are healthy, laying eggs, and eating fine. They are now 6 months old. None of them have weird pupils or changing eye colors either. Wouldn’t a PCR test analyzing blood be pretty accurate for the viruses? And if they are all presenting the same way shouldn’t more of my birds show something? And being so contagious wouldn't my birds in other coops also be dying? Especially the ones sharing the same run? I have susceptible bantams that are only divided by a gate. They would most certainly be exposed to any virus in the big run? I just don’t know anymore!
. I'm happy to have a chance to send you something for a change! Most of my bags are Nutrena but I'll dig through and see if I have anything interesting.
