Girlfriends chickens mysterious sickness

[u/golden_kingyo]

So my girlfriends chickens have been suddenly acting sick now and been dying within the week of showing these symptoms. This is the second one in two months that’s showed these symptoms and nothing but spraying a bit of water had been helping and even afterwards they just get all dropping again. Symptoms: Lethargy, diarrhea, not eating or drinking, sleeping all the time Location: Texas (but they have plenty of water throughout the day and get spritzed) Breeds: ornamental chickens

Girlfriend has some pictures of the icky butt too, but doesn’t want it posted unless specifically asked for. Note: she’s tried to take them to the vet but they don’t have any exotic vets within 50+miles and her mom refuses to help medicate them or let her take them to get help/tested.

[u/Particular-Story127]

This is so sad. I have had chickens for decades so please take my advice. She needs to put them all down. There is no going back from this. When all chickens are gone, she should not get new ones for at least 3 months. Disinfect the coop and turn the soil with a shovel. (Sorry, I am Danish, I hope, you understand). Usually chickens die from intestinal dicease or some sort of respiratory illness. This could be bird flu, so you need to protect yourselves. Dig tgem down. Change clothes and wash the clothes you wore when you were near them and take a bath.

[u/golden_kingyo → u/Particular-Story127]

Unfortunately purging all her chickens isn't an option, as one flock is hers and the other her moms. Her mom refuses to let her treat them, put them down and lets them die off and continues to buy more (unfortunately this poor girl passed and her mom just got 5-6 new chicks :/ )

They have two large flocks of chickens and need them in order to receive partial tax return for them being on the land and my girlfriend is incredibly attacked to them as she's raised all of them over the last 5+ years.

It's definitely not avian bird flu, as they show 0 symptoms of it, but we're pretty sure it's a bacterial infection, which her mom still continues to refuse us to treat them since she wants to still collects eggs, even tho she, her son and other daughter are now eating bacterial infected eggs... :(

[u/Pullet]

If you are in the US, your state offers backyard poultry disease processing. They’ll take the recent dead/dying and try to identify what is wrong as part of disease surveillance.

[u/golden_kingyo → u/Pullet]

Not sure if Texas offers that, but we tried asking the local vets and they all want $600+ to test them.

[u/Particular-Story127]

And wear a mask!

[u/Particular-Story127]

When a chicken show suffering and is visibly ill, it's in a really bad condition. They will go to extremes to appear healthy because predators always target weak individuals in a flock.

[u/Catiewithac123]

I just had a chicken like this with coccidiosis- chickens with obvious symptoms I gave corrid orally (via a syringe) for 7 days. The other chickens had corrid added to their water as a preventative. All chickens survived. The ones showing symptoms I brought inside so they wouldn’t also have to deal with the heat.

[u/Catiewithac123 → u/Catiewithac123]

After corrid make sure to give them a vitamin (I use poultry cell added to their water) because corrid depletes vitamin B12