What do you do with your sick chickens?

[CraziChknLady]

What do you do with your sick chickens?

If it can be treated ( like worms, sour crop, muscle or leg injury, mites to name a few), do you? Or do you cull to keep the best ones?

IF it's not curable( like a CRD, Mycoplasma or something similar), do you treat anyways?
Or do you automatically cull? Do you allow them to live out their days until the disease gets them?

Do you decide that anyone that shows any type of symptoms are automatically separated from the flock and culled?

If one is sick, do you keep them with flock for a herd immunity and whoever lives gets to pass their genes on?

I know some things like worms or sour crop can be treated, but would that eventually make them a weak link and susseptible to having it again?

I know everyone's opinion might be different. Just looking to see what types of options are out there.

 

[Bawkbok]

This is definitely a personal choice and I would say it is highly dependent upon your intentions for your flock. If you have a large flock, a loss or two would not be felt as much as with smaller flocks.

Personally, I try to treat all illnesses as best I can to give the chicken a chance at a good life and and to be productive. Many ailments are treatable but some illnesses are simply not curable. If you don't have the time or gumption to treat then humanely dispatching is the best option so the bird doesn't suffer.

I do not remove them from the flock - depending on the situation - as exposure has already occurred and removing one from the flock is harder on them when reintegrating.

Many people will remove them and bring them into their home while treating and recuperating, again, depending on the situation such as a predator attack where the bird has exposed muscle and skin and can be pecked on by others. Other people place them in a secured area or crate, still in with the flock so they can see each other and not be totally separated.

Again, this is a personal choice based on one's ability, time, budget and intention of the overall flock.

 

[kattabelly]

I'll provide treatment when I'm able to and when I believe doing so is likely to improve the chicken's quality of life, at least for a while, more than not intervening would. Sometimes that's meant pretty intensive treatment for a bird that seemed to want to live (I had a newly hatched chick living in my shirt for most of a week this summer because it was so scrawny, I was tube feeding even during the night). Sometimes it's meant not stressing a sick or injured bird further by trying to catch them, and just waiting for them to either get better on their own or deteriorate to the point that they can't run away.

Depending on the illness or injury, I might decide not to breed from them if I thought future generations were likely to have similar issues. Choosing to euthanise a chicken that isn't already at death's door would mostly be based on their quality of life but I might also choose to kill a chicken that wasn't that unwell, if I was already planning to harvest a bird for meat and just needed some way to choose which one to take.

I'd avoid separating a chicken unless I really had to. Even then, I'd prefer to keep them in sight of the others and only physically separated as much as they need to be to avoid things like getting pecked or trampled.

 

[Debbie292d]

If it can be treated ( like worms, sour crop, muscle or leg injury, mites to name a few), do you?

Yes, always. I don't know anyone who would cull for something like this.

IF it's not curable( like a CRD, Mycoplasma or something similar), do you treat anyways?
Or do you automatically cull? Do you allow them to live out their days until the disease gets them?

Knock on wood, but if they got diseases, yes, I would treat. We already do Marek's and AI prevention (CS/B) here, going on over a year now. If any of them came down with something, we'd have mitigated their illness, but still would quarantine that bird or birds and do what we could to minimize deaths in our flock.

I also believe it's a personal choice.