- Aug 8, 2012
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Long story. I got 9 chickens from an auction place. This is my first time ever having chickens and I did some research but was not prepared for everything I've gone through. To shorten this story, one of the chickens (Chicken Doodle Doo is his name) had a problem with his eye from day one. He would blink it a lot and eventually started to keep it closed most of the time and I noticed that it had bubbles in it when he did have it open. He also started to cough and sneeze by the end of the 1st week I had these chickens. I had done some research here at BYC but didn't feel comfortable making a diagnosis and treating on my own. I took him to a vet that would see chickens. The vet turned out to have worked on a chicken farm some 20 yrs earlier and diagnosed Chicken Doodle Doo (CDD) with MG and CRD. CDD only weighed 2.1 lbs .He gave me doxycycline pills that I had to break up and put in his food daily for 2 weeks. I did as instructed, but after 5 days he didn't appear to be getting any better and another chicken came down with CRD (I knew they would all get it eventually). So I switched to Tylan 50 injections. The 2nd sick chicken got better quickly. Both of them were getting .25 CC of tylan injection twice a day, and I had Floxin Otic (cypro for eyes) that I put in any eyes that were bubbly. After one week of .25 cc and not getting better, I upped his dosage to .5 cc.Over that 2 week period where CDD was getting Tylan injections, other chickens got sick, but I didn't bother quarentining them (CDD was in a dog cage indoors due to the heat), but they all got better after just a few days of tylan (.5 cc's since they were all almost full grown) and floxin otic for eye issues. Once CDD was better (no runny nose or eye bubbles) I tried to reintroduce him to the flock, but he got beat up and wouldn't fight back, so I isolated him again. I weighed him at some point before putting him back in with the flock and he weighed 3 lbs. Hes comb and wattle both stayed pink. I hose comb was floppy and is wattles were shrunk. They never did get real read like they were when I first got it. For the next week I tried reintroducing CDD to the flock by having his cage next to the run and letting them free range together, but the free-ranging mix never worked out. So I decided to build CDD his own coop and let him live in the fenced in backyard area. He's very tame bird, will walk right up to you and let you hold him. It took me another week to build the coop. He was in there for 2 nights (with 2 companions that were are the bottom of the pecking order in the main flock and were the smallest) and things seemed to be going fine until yesterday morning when he didn't come out of the coop when I opened it up at 7 AM. The other 2 chickens came right out. I left him there and went to work. My wife (who works at home) told me that CDD was 'off' and lounging around a lot. She took him out of the coop around noon and he foraged for a bit, but would sit down for long periods of time. When I got home last night, I gave him an epsom salt bath, cleaned his bum feathers a bit, and blow dried him (according the hencam's blog instructions). He had not gone back into the coop at dark, which is why I gave him the bath. He did not seem well at all and I didn't expect him to be alive this morning, but he was awake when we opened the coop. I gave him a cup of food and water of his own that he didnt' have to get up to get to since he didn't seem to be able to stand. I had my wife give him a wazine/water dosage (based on 1 oz /gallon). He got 25 cc's of the solution over all, but it still very tired. He had a very wet diareaha sometime after the dosing (he had a normal poo last night). My wife picked him up, covered the diareaha with hay, and set him back down. He's very tired and i thin he's on death's doorstep. I hope he recovers. Does anyone have any other ideas for helping to pep him back up? The 'water' I'm giving him is an electrolyte solution (flocksaver?). He doesnt' seem interested in food today, even meal worms or yogurt. He pecked at some food a pit this morning. It's probably been a week since I weighed CDD last, and that point he only weighed 2.2 lbs, a pretty big reversal.
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