Chicken with swollen eyelid, congested sounding breathing and sluggish, please help!

[Eggcessive]

Antibiotics can cause fungal or yeast infections. Those can appear as white patches. But a vet would be the best to determine what. Antibiotics are not needed for fungal infection but antifungals such as Monistat or Medistatin/ Flagyl can help.AVet would do testing ting.

 

[ArtsyChicken25]

Antibiotics can cause fungal or yeast infections. Those can appear as white patches. But a vet would be the best to determine what. Antibiotics are not needed for fungal infection but antifungals such as Monistat or Medistatin/ Flagyl can help.AVet would do testing ting.

Ok thank you for the info! I think I have some Miconazole 7 (cvs brand Monistat) somewhere. The patches in her mouth do look more yellow. Do you think I should hold off on the Tylosin water for now just in case? Also if I tried treating some of the patches with a little iodine on a q-tip would that be ok? I’ve tried that method before a few years ago on a chicken and it helped get rid of her canker sores

 

[orelsi]

@orelsi Hello I hope you don’t mind me tagging you here, but I was doing some research on this forum for answers on what could be going on with my chicken, and saw your post about your chicken that had wet fowl pox. The symptoms sound similar to my chicken’s. I was thinking of getting some metronidazole to try to treat her. Do you think this would be worth a try even if she may have wet fowl pox?

Unfortunately you can't really treat wet fowl pox. She will either get better on her own thanks to her immune system or die. It's a nasty thing and it drives many owners very angry.

The Metronidazole is helpful if she has canker. If nothing else helps you may try it just because you both would have nothing to lose at that point.

 

[ArtsyChicken25]

Unfortunately you can't really treat wet fowl pox. She will either get better on her own thanks to her immune system or die. It's a nasty thing and it drives many owners very angry.

The Metronidazole is helpful if she has canker. If nothing else helps you may try it just because you both would have nothing to lose at that point.

Hello thank you for your reply. I actually managed to get a good look in her mouth yesterday and it didn't look as bad as I thought it was. The gray patch under her tongue is not longer there and the only spot that looks like canker is the very tip of her beak of the roof of her mouth. It seems like that spot and the sticky saliva is making it a littler harder to get dry food like her crumbles/pellets down. I started treating the yellow patch with a q-tip of iodine yesterday and will continue it to see if it helps. I did this for a previous chicken that appeared to have wet fowl pox with canker and worked.
Do you have any recommendations for what I could do to help keep her immune system up? Thank you!

 

[Chicken_tiger_catt]

Hi all,
This is the first time posting here for me, but I’m very familiar with this forum as I have come here many times for advice or information on taking care of my chickens.

I have a chicken that has been unwell for about a month and a half now and any ideas as to what could be causing her sickness and how to treat it would be helpful! Since it’s been that long I have a lot of information to provide so I’ll try to keep it as concise as I can.

• She is a Dominique, one of two chickens left from our flock of 20. She is around 9 years old. She does have a tumor on her left thigh/side in front of her leg that appeared around a year and a half ago, and had gotten bigger since. She does walks with a limp. She stopped laying eggs a couple years ago. Both chickens spend most of the time in the chicken run during the day, they’ll free range occasionally but only when monitored since we have many hawks and predators around.
• Mid February is when I noticed she was unwell, symptoms included congested sounding breathing, swollen eyelid/skin around right eye with bubbles in corner of eye. Not as chipper as she usually is. Kept her separated in the chicken coop with a heat lamp, water and layer pellets.
• Did some research here and saw people suggesting Mycoplasma with the symptoms she had, so I ordered some Tylosin Powder from our vet and treated her water for a week and a half (I felt she needed it longer than the 3-5 days recommended). 1 tsp per gallon was the original dosage, but gave her 1/4 tsp per liter since I was treating only her and changed the water out every couple days.
• A little improvement, bubbles went away and breathing sounded a bit better, but still “congested” and had a swollen eyelid.
• Started noticing a few scabs around both chickens faces. I thought maybe what she had could be Fowl Pox instead and that’s why she didn’t respond as well to the antibiotics. Around the time I noticed she was sick we had issues with wild birds getting in the chicken run and noticed a mosquito around (we live in New Jersey and the winter has been wet with temps ranging from freezing to 60 degrees). I read that Fowl Pox needs to run its course so I kept her separated still and she continued to drink and eat. The scabs eventually went away after a couple weeks.
• I saw people recommending Terramycin eye ointment for her swollen eye so I’ve been treating her eye for about 3 weeks now, mostly once a day. There was some improvement after a week and half of treatment but recently it’s gone back to where it started. She can open it slightly but keeps it closed most of the time.
• We’ve also found mites on both chickens and I have been dusting them with a mix of wood ash and DE occasionally (also most recently some Permethrin powder) until we can completely treat the entire coop.
• Sometimes when she drinks water, if she bends her head down after to pick at food, some clear sticky liquid comes out of her mouth. It doesn’t have a smell and it usually only happens after she drinks. She does seem like she drinks a lot at once.

Most recently I’ve been keeping her in the coop with a screen door on and for a short time she’ll come out in the chicken run and peck some scratch grain with the other chicken before going to bed. She drinks water with a little ACV and a few drops of Poultry Cell vitamins. She does have an appetite, I’ve been giving her a bowl of wet layer pellets with cracked corn, sunflower seeds, milo seeds mixed in (though she mainly pick out the seed and corn). Occasionally she’ll get some chopped up scrambled eggs (which she loves) and veggies like lettuce, peppers, cucumber. She also will eat worms, grubs, and other small insects when I take her outside on warmer days to scratch around and dust bathe.

One other thing I’ve noticed is her feces have been green (mainly dark green, sometimes light) for a majority of the time she’s been ill, even on days that she doesn’t eat any grass or veggies. No signs of blood or anything in them. She’s thinner than the other chicken, and doesn’t eat as much as she should be. I check her crop every day and it’s full at night and empty in the morning. On week days I give her the mash with seeds in the morning, and when I get home from work I feel her crop and it’s usually empty, and she eats while I sit with her till she goes to bed. I’m trying to get her to eat her pellets because she doesn’t have a good diet now but haven’t been super lucky. She was eating some crushed up dry pellets a week ago. I tried mixing it with some yogurt but she doesn’t like anything that sticks to her beak, she’ll shake her head. I’ll include some pictures below.


Any advice on how to help/treat her would be super appreciated! I’m kind of at a loss, I love my chickens as they are my pets and I really want her to get better if possible. Thank you!

Photo 1: left side of face
Photo 2: right side of face that has swollen eyelid
Photo 3-4: some recent poop she made that is the occurring green color
Photo 5: a recent poop that looked more brown for once, I did feed her some red pepper the day prior though
Photo 6: her bending over after drinking some water, with the clear liquid coming out of her mouth
Photo 7: this is her this morning, hunched in and looking worse..

resperatory infection?

 

[orelsi]

Do you have any recommendations for what I could do to help keep her immune system up? Thank you!

You seem to be doing everything needed. Poultry vitamins, ACV, etc.

Something else that is helpful (if it is canker) is Thyme. Put it in boiling water for 5 mins as you would do with tea, let it cool down and give a couple of tea spoons twice a day, at the same time when you are giving the medication, for example. It can treat mild forms of canker and is beneficial to the immune system. It's popular in poultry folk medicine, but it's also mentioned in veterinary literature. It's a powerful herb. I've used it successfully before. It has anti-inflammatory, antiviral and antibacterial uses, mainly in the treatment of the upper respiratory system and it boosts immunity.

 

[ArtsyChicken25]

You seem to be doing everything needed. Poultry vitamins, ACV, etc.

Something else that is helpful (if it is canker) is Thyme. Put it in boiling water for 5 mins as you would do with tea, let it cool down and give a couple of tea spoons twice a day, at the same time when you are giving the medication, for example. It can treat mild forms of canker and is beneficial to the immune system. It's popular in poultry folk medicine, but it's also mentioned in veterinary literature. It's a powerful herb. I've used it successfully before. It has anti-inflammatory, antiviral and antibacterial uses, mainly in the treatment of the upper respiratory system and it boosts immunity.

Thank you for this info! I put some dry thyme leaves in a mug with some hot water from my kettle and gave her some, she probably drank around 6tsp of it maybe a little less since some of it with some saliva came out of her beak when she bent over a bit. I’ll keep giving her this daily along with the ACV and poultry vitamin water. I had stopped the Tylosin water recently because I was worried it was making her saliva worse, don’t know if I should keep holding off for a bit or get her back on it. She isn’t on any antibiotics at the moment.

 

[ArtsyChicken25]

Hi all just a little update: this morning she ate some scrambled egg and a little scratch mixed with wet mash, and drank a few tsp of thyme water. I came back to check on her a little later and she was hunched up feathers puffed with her tail down and eyes closed. She’s been standing/sitting under the heat lamp mostly today in the coop since it’s cold and super windy. I did have the coop door open for a bit so the wind might have chilled her. She’ll be like this for some time then walk over to her water (w/ ACV, thyme, vitamins) and drink a bunch and pick at her food for a bit, then go back to standing under the lamp. I noticed she had some mites around her vent/tail again so I dusted with some Permetherin powder. I also noticed she was stretching her neck out and opening her mouth wide about a dozen times in a row and stopped. I’ve read that the movement could just be her readjusting her crop and have seen her do this before, but could it indicate anything else? Also this is one of her poops today, it’s still dark green but this time looked a little bubbly?

 

[ArtsyChicken25]

@Eggcessive @orelsi hey guys sorry to tag you again but do you have any recommendations on what I could feed her to help get her weight/nutrition back up? Or can direct me to someone who might? She doesn’t want anything to do with her pellets/crumbles even when wet and I don’t want her to keep getting thinner, she’s already lost weight. She’ll eat scrambled eggs easily, is there a certain amount to give her? She’ll eat veggies, fruit, bird seed, grass and bugs. No yogurt as she doesn’t like stuff sticking to her beak. Any help would be appreciated!

 

[ArtsyChicken25]

@Eggcessive @orelsi hey guys sorry to tag you again but do you have any recommendations on what I could feed her to help get her weight/nutrition back up? Or can direct me to someone who might? She doesn’t want anything to do with her pellets/crumbles even when wet and I don’t want her to keep getting thinner, she’s already lost weight. She’ll eat scrambled eggs easily, is there a certain amount to give her? She’ll eat veggies, fruit, bird seed, grass and bugs. No yogurt as she doesn’t like stuff sticking to her beak. Any help would be appreciated!

Hi all I posted another thread because I found a large canker sore in her mouth today, but I’ll still post to here as well. Here’s the new thread https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...om-possible-wet-fowl-pox-please-help.1618605/