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I second this. If you have chickens long enough and are unfortunate enough to get a sick flock you will learn this.
Diagnosing a disease in a chicken is darn hard and people
just throw up thier hands and start up the antibiotics.
You can not treat a viral disease with antibiotics and usually,
not always though, you are dealing with a viral infection in
your flock. There are bacterial strains that cause respiratory
dieseases, no doubt, but the majority are viral.
I have come to this unpopular conclusion: you have to wait
and see if your bird is going to make it through the viral infection
and you HAVE to isolate the bird so as not to infect the others
Then you have to make the decision to reintroduce this bird back
into your flock. PROBLEM IS this bird will be a carrier and will in
a point of stress infect you flock.
So , do you cull at the onset of a disease, do you wait, do you treat with antibiotics ?? Really treating with antibiotics is a decision you need to make, but in the end the natural process will make your decision a mute factor anyhow.
I have a CLOSED FLOCK. meaning no one in, no one out.
I have some sort of respiratory disease, it is a small percentage
in fatalities, but ALL of the flock has been infected now.
So, yes, in extreme cases when I see a bird with really bad
SECONDARY infections that I know are from a bacteria I do
treat with antibiotics, but I do it to the letter. When you treat
to the letter it is a long and arduous process, not a quick fix.
