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

[Eggcessive]

What is your general location? Do you notice a bad odor from the beak now? Canker is a protozoan infection from pigeons and wild birds. Wet fowl pox is completely different, a virus from mosquitoes. Your location would help in a diagnosis. There is no treatment for wet fowl pox, but for canker, metronidazole or Flagyl from a vet is a treatment.

 

[ArtsyChicken25]

What is your general location? Do you notice a bad odor from the beak now? Canker is a protozoan infection from pigeons and wild birds. Wet fowl pox is completely different, a virus from mosquitoes. Your location would help in a diagnosis. There is no treatment for wet fowl pox, but for canker, metronidazole or Flagyl from a vet is a treatment.

We live in southern New Jersey. I don’t smell any kind of odor around her mouth, which makes me think it’s not just canker..

 

[ArtsyChicken25]

We live in southern New Jersey. I don’t smell any kind of odor around her mouth, which makes me think it’s not just canker..

What is your general location? Do you notice a bad odor from the beak now? Canker is a protozoan infection from pigeons and wild birds. Wet fowl pox is completely different, a virus from mosquitoes. Your location would help in a diagnosis. There is no treatment for wet fowl pox, but for canker, metronidazole or Flagyl from a vet is a treatment.

Hello I was wondering if our location would indicate it could be fowl pox?

 

[Eggcessive]

I doubt that pox is an issue right now because you probably don’t have mosquitoes out in abundance. If it still cool in the early mornings in Ohio, and you probably have the same weather. We hardly ever see fowl pox this far north. It is more a problem in warm weather states, such as FL, AL, LA, TX, CA and in the Tropics.

 

[ArtsyChicken25]

I doubt that pox is an issue right now because you probably don’t have mosquitoes out in abundance. If it still cool in the early mornings in Ohio, and you probably have the same weather. We hardly ever see fowl pox this far north. It is more a problem in warm weather states, such as FL, AL, LA, TX, CA and in the Tropics.

Would chickens contract the virus and have symptoms shortly after the mosquitoes bite? We had horrible mosquitoes last summer and into late fall since the weather was so warm, but I noticed her unwell mid February, when it was fairly cold still. I have found a few mosquitoes around in march.

 

[triciayoung]

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..

Her symptoms point to infectious coryza. There are many symptoms you noted that are IC and are not MG. However, I think you should swab her with their kit, and send the swab to: you can do MG and IC and it is inexpensive: https://www.vetdna.com/about-us. Unfortunately, I have a lot of experience with IC. There is not one antibiotic that works for all chickens that have IC. I had to use two. Since you have used Tylosin, I would use oxytetracyline or Baytril next. I would add bromhexine for the thick mucous. It makes a difference for antibiotic effectiveness.

 

[ArtsyChicken25]

Her symptoms point to infectious coryza. There are many symptoms you noted that are IC and are not MG. However, I think you should swab her with their kit, and send the swab to: you can do MG and IC and it is inexpensive: https://www.vetdna.com/about-us. Unfortunately, I have a lot of experience with IC. There is not one antibiotic that works for all chickens that have IC. I had to use two. Since you have used Tylosin, I would use oxytetracyline or Baytril next. I would add bromhexine for the thick mucous. It makes a difference for antibiotic effectiveness.

Thank you for the information! Does IC usually come with a foul odor around the chicken’s mouth? She has no noticeable odor and also recently I found a yellow canker sore/plaque in her mouth I didn’t realize was there, I posted it on this thread https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...om-possible-wet-fowl-pox-please-help.1618605/

It also has no odor from what I can tell. I think that might be what is causing her thick saliva and trouble eating..

 

[ArtsyChicken25]

@triciayoung Hi is it still possible for it to be IC even though she has no foul odor from her mouth? I managed to swab the yellow plaque in her throat with a q-tip and there is no odor from it. The past couple days I've applied some diluted betadine to it on a q-tip. I've still been washing her eye with saline and adding Terramycin to it, not much improvement.

 

[Eggcessive]

That does look like either canker or wet fowl pox inside the beak. Canker is said to have a bad odor. Coryza also has a bad odor. It is hard to get medications without a vet nowadays. And before treating, it would be best to have a vet diagnose the yellow material. Metronidazole has been the drug recommended to treat canker, a protozoan infection. But it has become hard to get without a vet. Some try to remove the yellow plaques of both canker and wet pox. Canker is transmitted from pigeons and wild birds in drinkers and water spots.

 

[ArtsyChicken25]

So here’s an update: beginning of the week I started treating her yellow sore with an iodine q-tip for four days, Thursday I came home from work and she was definitely feeling worse. I had left the coop door ajar so she could get some fresh air and I think she got chilled through. Her whole body was shuddering/shivering occasionally and she was all hunched up with her tail down and eyes closed. I sat her in my lap for an hour and she warmed up some.

Her breathing is a little noisier (like it’s in her sinuses). She’s not too interested in eating during the day (will gladly eat sun flower seeds and red pepper I chop up for her in pieces, she’s grown tired of scrambled egg). I notice specifically around later afternoon/evening 6:30pm or so her appetite will come back and she will eat for an hour and fill her crop up, mainly with milo seeds I have on a plate for her and some more pepper before going to bed.

She has a lot of bubbly saliva in her mouth that makes it hard for her to eat seeds or dry food as it gets stuck in her mouth and she has to work it back. I put some vetrx on a qtip this morning and swabbed around her nostrils and in her mouth a bit hoping it will help with her congestion/breathing. She’s drinking on her own just not always interested in her food. She’s getting ACV, thyme water, poultry vitamins, probiotics, vetrx.

Below are some photos of her droppings today so far. I’m trying really hard to keep her eating, she has interest in food but between her swollen eye, saliva/mucus and yellow sore in her throat it’s making it hard for her to eat..