Wheezing Pullets

[glencoejo]

I have a dozen new Australorp pullets. They are now approximately 18 weeks old. When I brought them home about four weeks ago and introduced them to their new home I discovered that, because it was an extremely hot day, they were all badly dehydrated. After a few days of cool fresh water and good food they seemed to be fully recovered. That is, all but two of them. One spends each afternoon under a bush sleeping very soundly and the other is making the most awful wheezing noise as she breathes. Both these pullets are eating well but the symptoms stay the same. Neither pullet looks sick but something is definitely not right.

Is there any cure for the awful wheezing? She sounds like she has a bad bronchial condition (and probably has). Does anybody out there have any advice or clues as to why this is happening? Will she recover with time? Is this one of the problems that can occur after bad dehydration?

I had this problem several years ago when I purchased six meat pullets. They grew unbelievably fast and by the middle of an extremely cold winter when there was frost on the ground and the chooks drinking water was frozen each morning, one of the heavy meat pullets somehow managed to fall into the ducks bath water which was in an old bath tub. I found her thrashing around in the freezing water (I think she had only been in the tub for a minute or two) so I grabbed some towels and dried her off then I got my hair dryer and dried her off completely. This warmed her up as well. From that time onwards she had the most terrible gurgling wheeze and it never went away. She continued to eat an incredible amount of food, as only a meat chicken will, but she never got better. In the end my husband was forced to put her out of her misery with the axe.

 

[chooks4life]

Could be something contagious, whether they brought it with them or whether it was already lurking in your soil. It's worth looking into diseases, i.e. via Google search, and bookmarking all good sites you find because none of them has complete information.

Fresh raw garlic, crushed or cut, will help. (Maybe give it mixed in with yoghurt or something else as an appetizer as it's probably an unfamiliar food to them). It kills a lot of disease causing bacteria, viruses, microorganisms etc that even the strongest man-made antibiotics can't. If made up fresh, it contains Allicin, a byproduct of the interaction of the enzymes in the garlic which is dynamic rather than static like artificial antibiotics. Disease agents become immune to static antibiotics as they never change, whereas the virus, bacteria etc does change; garlic as a living plant is naturally also ever-changing, according to environment, genetics, etc. One or two cloves per bird is a good start. It won't hurt them but is beneficial in a lot of ways.

Web searches using different keywords will yield a lot of valuable information, and I use a few different search engines as well but predominantly Google as it usually gets me the best results in this area. Here is a link which should at least help you identify if they have a disease, by the symptoms. Best wishes with your flock.
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[Eggcessive]

Most respiratory diseases are very contagious, and make carriers out of your flock. Personally, I would cull the 2 sick birds. The others may be carriers already, but MG/CRD or some other other diseases are never cured--antibiotics will only help decrease the symptoms for awhile. I wouldn't take a chance on it spreading. If any other chicken gets sick, I would consider culling the flock and starting over.