Why did the chicken die?

[307151]

My friend had 7 chickens. She told me one chicken was losing feathers, and we eventually found her dead. I took the 6 chickens she had left. I know they have scaley leg mites so we bathed them, scrubbed their feet with apple cidar vinegar and anti bacterial soap, and coated them with petroleum jelly. We rubbed diatamacious earth all over their body and put 4 drops on each bird of ivermectin to treat internal worms they might have. We've only been rubbing jelly on their legs once a week though. Today marks their second week since they have been treated. They are due to get treated with ivermectin again, when I went out there today, I found one of them dead. She rarley laid eggs from what my friend told me, but when I brought her home, she did pop one out from stress I guess of the move. I checked out her skin and feathers and she looked like a pretty healthy chicken to me honestly. So I'm wondering why she died. Also, another chicken (the one with the worst scaled up legs) is still having diarhea.

They've been eating commerical layers food.

 

[earlybird10842]

It's probably a combination of the parasites, complications from the parasites, and stress, perhaps with another condition as well.
Keep the other hens away from any other chickens you have.

 

[casportpony]

Ivermectin is not an effective poultry wormer, use Safeguard for goats instead. The dose I use is 0.23ml per pound for five days. DE won't work either, buy some poultry dust or 5% Sevin powder.

-Kathy

 

[307151]

bump

 

[Skcup]

I don't know if this is true for chickens as well but horses and cows with heavy parasite loads can die when they are treated for them. It's too much for their system; general advice is if you suspect a huge worm load, introduce smaller gradual doses of wormer until they've shed some of the heavy load and can handle it.