The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Poultry & Waterfowl => Topic started by: robbiegrant on March 08, 2014, 02:03:45 am
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Dear All.
Have not posted for a while... Life down on the river bank has been largely harmonious. Our girls barely stopped laying all winter, shiny eyed and full of mischief as usual. Yesterday the Wife noticed one of our 18 month old Indian Runners "Kroshka" was looking bloated, thought she was maybe about to lay an egg and thought nothing more of it. Today she was the same. We checked if she was egg bound but no evidence of an egg. We brought her into the house and sat her in a bath of warm water and gently massaged her abdomen and gently lubricated her vent with vaseline. Still nothing.
.....and with that off to the vet.
Both vets diagnosed peritonitis, we know this is not good and often there is no good outcome for the bird..
But sometimes there is a good outcome... and whilst she has good energy and is not in pain we want to do all we can for her. We are wondering if anyone has any experience with treating poultry/waterfowl for this condition.
Vet gave her a calcium injection and antibiotics to put in her water. She is now indoors in a quiet, darkened room with food and water. Close to a warm radiator.
She is immaculate as always, shiny bill and feathers, still has her energy, eating, drinking and pooing.
We have heard of people draining the fluid off with a catheter or syringe ( scarey ). Obviously this would be a job for a vet or someone with good experience of this. The possibilities for introducing infection or damaging internal organs would abound.
Others recommend using a diuretic to help her absorb the extra fluid, i wondered if a natural product such as valerian root extract which is successfully used to treat edema would be OK for ducks.?
Some recommend milk thistle to help her liver fight infection
We have also found accounts of people flushing the abdominal area of infected chickens by pushing 6cc's of warm mild vinegar or saline solution into the vent daily ( also a little scary )
Would it be a good idea to take her of layers pellets and if so what should we feed her instead.
Is there anything that will slow down her egg productive system to give her time to recover?
These are new questions for our vet tomorrow. But we wonder if anyone else has heard or experienced these things?
....Or if we can find a duck/poultry/avian specialist in the central scotland area that could help. ( she seems to be quiet happy in her basket in the car! ) didn't like the vet tho! mind you if he was sticking his fingers and needles into me i wouldn't be happy either!!!
Kroshka and her two sister are pets, part of our household. They hold similar status to our cat ( fidget the midget ) ! except the cat does not lay such tasty eggs :)
Joking aside this is an awful state of affairs and we wish to do what we can to help her back to 100%.
All the best
Robbie
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I'm afraid I have no experience of this condition at all so I can't give any practicial advice but you clearly love your pet duck and I really hope she pulls through for you. It sounds like you are doing all you can for her. :&>
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If it's any help Robbiegrant we had a hen with apparent peritonitis. She was bloated and not laying but seemed happy and her abdomen wasn't hot to the touch. Several weeks later she 'exploded' during the night and I cleaned up two dustpans of wet bedding. Next night it was one dustpan and she started laying a week later. She lived another 6 months, but it was a dog attack combined with old age that finished her off. So it must have been an abdominal fluid buildup in her, but not of eggs. I remember someone doing a post mortem and finding a dozen egg yolks in a chicken's abdomen though and we lost all our Blackrocks to probable peritonitis. Antibiotics didn't help long term. The swellings went down but returned with increasing frequency and one by one they were PTS.
Wish you the best of luck.
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If it's any help Robbiegrant we had a hen with apparent peritonitis. She was bloated and not laying but seemed happy and her abdomen wasn't hot to the touch. Several weeks later she 'exploded' during the night and I cleaned up two dustpans of wet bedding. Next night it was one dustpan and she started laying a week later. She lived another 6 months, but it was a dog attack combined with old age that finished her off. So it must have been an abdominal fluid buildup in her, but not of eggs. I remember someone doing a post mortem and finding a dozen egg yolks in a chicken's abdomen though and we lost all our Blackrocks to probable peritonitis. Antibiotics didn't help long term. The swellings went down but returned with increasing frequency and one by one they were PTS.
Wish you the best of luck.
Hi Chris
Thanks for that. Proof that some do recover. Shame about the dog attack. poor wee thing.
Kroshka was happy to see me this morning and she is still her usual self. Eating drinking and pooing....
Always happy to decimate lettuce.
Off to buy milk thistle and valerian root extract
fingers crossed...
Regards
Robbie
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I'm afraid I have no experience of this condition at all so I can't give any practicial advice but you clearly love your pet duck and I really hope she pulls through for you. It sounds like you are doing all you can for her. :&>
Thanks for your support
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Decided to avoid valerian root extract as it is also a soporific and we dont want her to be drowsy. we used a quarter tablet of a natural water retention pill from holland and barrett which has dandelion in it which is a know natural diuretic. we also have calcium and charcoal tablets which are being added to a little catfood ( which she loves! )
No change in her.. Apart from the fact that we know something is wrong. She is just her usual cheeky self.. Lets hope she stays healthy and beats this thing.
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I nursed a hen with peritonitis through 9 months of last year...
I tried a lot of different things and some treatments worked somewhat for a while, giving her another few weeks of more or less normal life, but the liquid buildup always came back eventually, and made her very uncomfortable, when her belly grew to be really big and tight like a ball...
She started off appearing OK like yours, but the more the bloat advanced (over a few eeks) the less active she would become, looking tired, standing around alone rather than roaming with the other, and eating less and less, and loosing a lot of weight.
Initially the vet gave her calcium & oxytocin, to help with a stuck egg, but she wasn't eggbound, and it didn't help at all. She had antibiotics too, but that didn't make a huge difference either (in any case, if the liquid stuff in her belly got infected internally it would have killed her in days if not hours).
I then found out about the 'Superlorin' hormone implant (look it up on chicken forums, lots of info out there): some people have used this quite successfully with peritonitis hens. It's supposed to halt egg production to allow the body to absorb all that liquid without more egg fluid being produced all the time (it's like a microchip injected under the skin, originally developed to treat aggression in dogs... go figure!). It's hideously expensive (about £50) and the effect is supposed to last 6-12 months. The vet didn't know about its use in chickens, but she did her research after I insisted, and we tried it on Luna (although I thought it was crazy to spend so much money on a chicken, but I could not not to).
The vet also tried the 'drainage' method of the fluid, it was quite a procedure and only drained 30-40ml every time, as it was really sticky and lumpy stuff and clogging up even quite a big needle...
Either the implant or the draining or a combination of both helped for a little while, Luna got her life back for about 6 weeks, then she started blowing up again. The implant was clearly not working on her as long it might do (it doesn't always work well apparently). So after that all I could do is taking her for another round of 'draining' every few weeks, whenever she was back to her mopey sick self. The draining took it out of her every time (she would hide in the coop for the rest of the day) but it did take the pressure of her abdomen and she would perk up for a while, and I would be so happy seeing her roaming around with the others again and have some fun (the longest, with the implant, was 8 weeks, the shortest was 2 weeks, the relapses came sooner as the time passed).
Looking back I think I should / would have also tried homeopathy, and massive doses of Vitamin C which is supposed to work wonders with inflammation/poisoning/tumours (not sure about peritonitis, but you come to a stage where trying anything can either help or it's the end)... but we run out of time...
she got to a very bad point and I had to let her go just before Xmas. :'(
Sorry about the long post, but maybe it gives you some options to try. Hope they help Kroshka.
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Hi LadyK
Thanks for your message.
Poor wee Luna :(
Kroshka is still herself, apart from the bump all seems normal. We let her out to run with the others for a couple hours but have separated her again this evening.
We have the numbers of a couple of bird doctors and she seems to travel OK so hopefully tomorrow we will get her to an avian specialist.
We have taken her off layers pellets and giving mixed corn porridge. cottage cheese, lettuce and a little catfood
we put a mild antibiotic in her water and add mild natural water tablets( natural), calcium and activated charcoal into her feed She is dimly lit. Thanks for the Hormone implant tip. As a result I also found a hormone injection ( got it written down somewhere. doh. )
Be well and thanks again
Robbie
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Given the usual grim outlook for the condinition (it will most probably get them eventually - depends how long you can keep them comfortable enough), I would really do everything to keep her life happy and stress free for as long as possible.
For example, if she enjoys being with the others (i.e. they don't pick on her) do you really need to separate her? You could still give her her special food during the day (she will eat less pellets if full on something else).
Feeding turmeric (fed with oil and a dash of black pepper to activate) is supposed to be really good for inflammation too.
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Greetings...
There is a grim outcome for life ( being death.... ) So we all may as well make the most of what is here for us.
She enjoys being with the others and the vet concurred with you that we should let them all be together, we will double up the cleaning schedule to make sure the are no ground for infection.
The vet helped us work out an accurate dosing regimen for the Tylan. orally. ( rather than putting it in drinking water ) we now know how much calcium/D3 supplements ( don't want to overdose her on vit D3 )
Vet suggested a hormone that comes in a jab that will reduce her ovulation to allow her to reabsorb her yolks.
She also gave us Metacam to reduce inflammation in general.
We are doing all we can for her. Kroshka is as bright eyed and super cheeky as usual.
be well
Robbie
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I admire your tenacity Robbiegrant. Good luck to you and Kroshka.
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A wee update.
The drug mentioned is Delvosteron it is used in treatment of dogs to stop ovulation. The vet has checked with the manufacturer and It can be used from ducks too. Basically it will stop the production of yolks and give her a chance to absorb the fluid she has built up. She is still a happy duck. no outward signs that anything is wrong. We now know the peritonitis is not infected as she would have died by now. We are awaiting a call back from the vet.
I have found internet forum where one side effects are moulting after the injection. Wonder if there are other potentio
al side effects?????
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Another update.
She laid an egg! :excited:
We have not yet implemented the hormone injection yet.
Monitoring her closely.
Wee scamp that she is!
Robbie
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Another egg...
Things are looking up.
She is still waddling about looking pregnant tho.
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The eggs should mean that her laying apparatus is still able to function properly - that's great news! :thumbsup:
Maybe you should get the vet to drain some of the liquid inside to help her body with the absorption job.
My hen's body wasn't able to re-absorb any of the liquid, so the pressure on her belly didn't get better even after the hormones, not until we did the draining. In hindsight I wish we hadn't waited so long to see if her body could do it herself, as it was the mainly the built-up pressure that was making her miserable, really.
Wishing you more good progress :fc:
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Kroshka is still rocking on. Daily laying. Running about happy as Larry with her pals. Swelling going down! Lauries the vets ( avian specialist in falkirk ) think this may pass naturally, they can do the drain thing but prefer not to introduce any points of infection. They have suggested we monitor her an see how it goes. They also said if it gets worse they can implant a chip ( not delvosteron ) cant remember proper name ( started with the word super- )
So...... :fc:
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a month now since the bother with Kroshka. She is still her cheeky self. swelling going down slowly. been laying up until a few days ago, now they have all stopped laying, We think they are preparing to molt. If so this might not be a bad thing as it will give her body a break. :fc:
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Sounds very encouraging!
Maybe Kroshka will recover - a duck is maybe (probably?) more resilient than a hybrid laying hen.
Fingers crossed for you! :fc:
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QUACK QUACK :&> :&> :&> :excited: :thumbsup:
Thank you.