Author Topic: rattley chooks (Read 2461 times)

Elissian · « **on:** February 22, 2010, 09:31:47 pm »

One of my chickens has been coughing a sort of syruppy cough, she now has a foamy eye. My trusted chicken health handbook says the only disease affecting the eyes that attributes bubbly eyes is mycoplasma which is not curable as they become carriers and therefore you cannot sell them on as they will infect every bird they meet. It looks as if i am going to have to cull the flock. but before i do, your thoughts please as i obvously will only do this as a last resort..
Thanks, Helen

shetlandpaul · « **Reply #1 on:** February 22, 2010, 09:46:27 pm »

go to the vet. it may be not what you think.

Elissian · « **Reply #2 on:** February 23, 2010, 10:43:01 am »

I presume you are in the shetlands! I'm interested to know if your vet has good knowledge of chickens. Around here there are lots of hobby chicken keepers and no vets (as far as i know) with a particular interest in them.. It seems to be a reoccuring question "do you know a vet with any chicken knowledge". I think that the large chicken farms accept losses and vets are not called to make chcickens better.
The vet is leaving some batrill at the surgery for me to pick up, he doesn't need to see the chicken. The only way of knowing what the disease is ,is to have 2 chickens from the flock slaughtered and tested. The batrill wont cure mycoplasm it will simply stop deaths . they will all be carriers. The only thing i could do is introduce a new bird (after the flock has not shown any symptoms for a while) and see if it develops the symptoms. So it looks as if i won't be breeding orpingtons this year. i also had just promised to buy a cockerel of a keen young chicken keeper to encourage her, so it looks as if i will have to source some new hens for him. AH well that's life!

shetlandpaul · « **Reply #3 on:** February 23, 2010, 10:52:06 am »

not wonderful. but very helpful. any idea how it was introduced. if its what you think then it is a shame for the birds and for you too. not something you would want in a breeding flock.

sagehen · « **Reply #4 on:** February 23, 2010, 12:55:31 pm »

Could be infectious coryza. How are the other chooks? Hope it doesn't spread

Elissian · « **Reply #5 on:** February 23, 2010, 06:19:49 pm »

One of the others is a bit rattly but al the rest are OK so far. The frothy eyed one is not so ill that she cant put up a fight when we caught her to give her the baytrill but her crop was empty so she's off her food. Some younger members of the flock came in as hatching eggs last year, i suppose they may have been infected. The buffs also didn't like the snow and stayed in their house for 2 weeks i don't suppose that helped. It's funny my brahmas were not at all phased by the snow.
Thankfully our other breeds are well spaced out around the holding so they shouldn't get it. My worst worry is if they are carriers it would be very wrong of me to sell their offspring and as it's difficult to prove i think these will just have to be eating egg layers only from now on, funnily enough we were thinking of phasing out the orps so it's not the end of the world.
Our vet is lovely too, very interested in all we do but chickens are not their strong point.