Sally died...

Fuzzyfelt123

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Hi all, I wrote a post a couple of months ago when i had poorly chickens with sneezing and diarrhoea... took them to the vets, got them wormed, treated for mites etc and given antibiotics. They all perked up but the sneezing has continued, and the there is a lot of clear liquid droppings around from various girls. Sally however has been qithdrawn and puffed up for a good week or so; i wasn't surprised to find her dead yesterday :cry: . I lost one of my other girls earlier in the year after several months of sneezing... I'm not sure what to do, my other girls look fine and it seems antibiotics etc don't stop the sneezing! They are all ex-batts so have all been vaccinated - just wanted some reassurance, advice etc :-)19
 
Really sorry to hear that Sally died Fuzzyfelt123. We've had a lot of birds with clear liquid droppings which seem to result from preening during the moult. The poos have bits of undigested feather sheaths in them. Several have gone 'sour crop' and been resolved by a water only diet -Daisy took 48 hours to clear. But none of ours are sneezing, although we have had bouts of it which I put down to dusty coops because a good clean out and a change of bedding sorted them. Obviously the sneezing isn't a respiratory infection. Is there anything that could be causing an allergic reaction -paint, dust, water additives, preservatives?
 
glad the clear droppings are normal! i only use dust extracted bedding and it doesn't seem related to that as i have changed bedding with no difference, there is plenty of ventilation in the coop...although about 4 hens all sit on top of each other in one nest box :-)07 and the remainder perch. i haven't really changed anything :-)09 . The only thing is we seem to have a rat problem (lots of droppings in our shed ) and a large burrow into their coop ( it is raised several foot off the ground). I don't leave any food out to attract them , however i live in village backing onto fields and they tend to head this way when all the produce is harvested! I do wonder if they have infected the chickesn but then again, the rats droppings have only been noticable the past few weeks.hmmmm :-)19
 
Rat urine stinks Fuzzyfelt123 and it may possibly be that causing the sneezing. Guess if you eliminate the rat problem you may solve the sneezing but until then you won't know. We used to have a big problem with rats as we lived alongside a canal. I caught hundreds over the years. Some were so big they wouldn't go into a rat trap so we used a rabbit trap. We then moved on to Fenn4 snap traps. There was a long thread on it a couple of years ago. We hang all our feeders at night but there were always spilt pellets on the ground. Haven't got that problem here yet; the ground is quite hard so tunnelling would be a problem and there are lots of owls and hawks around.
 
i haven't actually seen any rats - just some tunnels and droppings in the shed! One of the birds is sounding a bit 'gurgly' like she needs to have a good cough! so may be it's a viral infection....putting ACV in the water, not sure what else to do?
 
Gurgly could be a respiratory infection Fuzzyfelt. We have had these before caused by mould growth inside the coop from lack of ventilation and also from far eastern (hardwood) ply that got wet. The mould releases fungal spores. Treatment with antibiotics may be necessary unless the cause is removed immediately. We had a really sick cockerel from that who needed a 10 day double dose of Baytril. The last 'gurgly' we had was impending heart failure but that is very unlikely -Harriett was 7 ½.

We don't use ACV. Can't be sure of the benefits and it may discourage them from drinking.
 
Sorry for your lost. If you've not solved the rat problem yet, please do because they can transmit a lot of diseases to the chicken.
 
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