Cold remedy for a sick hen

[M Claire]

Hello all, just sharing a good success that I had with some simple treatment for a sick hen.

Thunderess (don't ask, the kids named her), one of my beautiful black Marans hens who is not quite a year yet, was looking truly awful yesterday when I went into the coop for my morning chores. The skin around her eyes was swollen, her nostrils were caked with dried mucus, her eyes were glued shut, and when she did finally get them open there was a lot of bubbly conjuctivitis, and she was coughing and making wet noises when she breathed.

I wrapped her in a towel, got a 1ml pet syringe, and gave her 1ml of vitamin/mineral supplement, and probably 10 ml of 1 drop oregano oil and 1 drop thyme oil diluted in 3 cups of water. Already by the afternoon she was perking up a bit, but in the evening I did the same treatment and the today she looks so much better. Her eyes are clear and her nose is clear, just very slight puffiness around the eyes. And she clearly feels better as she's out scratching around with the others. I'll give her the same treatment this evening and tomorrow evening if she'll let me, but so far the results are very encouraging!

As a side note, we've had 40-degree temperature changes in the past 10 days, so that's probably how she caught her cold.

 

[dawg53]

Birds do not get colds, they get specific disease(s.) As with most respiratory diseases, your remedy/treatment is temporary, even if antibiotics were used. Treatments mask symptoms and do not cure the disease. Birds that survive treatments are carriers for life and will transmit the disease to other birds.
You will have to maintain a closed flock. No new birds in, no birds out. Depending what disease it is, they can be transmitted through eggs. That means no hatching eggs to be sold or given away.
Keep in mind that when birds get stressed, symptoms usually reappear. If you decide to use antibiotics, the disease will build resistance to the antibiotic requiring a different more powerful antibiotic and so on.
You may eventually have to cull sick birds.

 

[Ni62]

Hello all, just sharing a good success that I had with some simple treatment for a sick hen.

Thunderess (don't ask, the kids named her), one of my beautiful black Marans hens who is not quite a year yet, was looking truly awful yesterday when I went into the coop for my morning chores. The skin around her eyes was swollen, her nostrils were caked with dried mucus, her eyes were glued shut, and when she did finally get them open there was a lot of bubbly conjuctivitis, and she was coughing and making wet noises when she breathed.

I wrapped her in a towel, got a 1ml pet syringe, and gave her 1ml of vitamin/mineral supplement, and probably 10 ml of 1 drop oregano oil and 1 drop thyme oil diluted in 3 cups of water. Already by the afternoon she was perking up a bit, but in the evening I did the same treatment and the today she looks so much better. Her eyes are clear and her nose is clear, just very slight puffiness around the eyes. And she clearly feels better as she's out scratching around with the others. I'll give her the same treatment this evening and tomorrow evening if she'll let me, but so far the results are very encouraging!

As a side note, we've had 40-degree temperature changes in the past 10 days, so that's probably how she caught her cold.

 

[Ni62]

Hi, where did you the ingredients ?
Thanks

 

[M Claire]

Hello Dawg,

Yes, I've heard that before about chickens not getting colds. Obviously I didn't mean that the chicken had a cold virus such a humans get, just symptoms resembling what a person would refer to as a cold. And the dramatic weather changes obviously brought out whatever disease this is that she is carrying. But thank you for encouraging me to use precise language. What's especially delightful with chickens is that many of their diseases have overlapping symptoms such that unless you're willing to pay a lab or kill the bird and pay a pathologist (and have leeway in your budget to do so), it is my impression that you can go on guessing and driving yourself mad for indefinitely long periods of time. But then I'm not an old timer chicken person by any stretch.

Anyway, it's not in my means to get a diagnosis. My first guess would be some variety of mycoplasmosis, but what do I really know. The fact is that we do have new birds coming in and we have birds that have been sick before without the whole flock getting sick and we've also got wild birds that pass over the land, turtledoves, tits, magpies, and so forth. That's an awful lot of variables that I can't control. So I'm pleased that she's looking better, but she may still die. I don't think it means that the rest of the flock will die too. One of our wyandottes had bubbly eyes whenever she snicked for weeks and weeks, a sussex went on snicking for weeks when we first got her. As of today, they are healthy productive flock members and nobody developped the symptoms that they had.

What more can I say?

About the essential oils, I just got them at a coop-type store. They're graded for internal and external use. The vitamin and mineral supplement is a poultry formulation from our local farm supply.

 

[Eggcessive]

I would get some injectable Tylan 50, and get some syringes and 20 gauge needles from your feed store cattle medicine aisle. Remove the needle to give the medicine orally. Dosage depends on his weight, but 1/4 ml per pound 3 times a day up to for 5 days is a safe dosage. This is a good treatment for MG. If the drainage smells very bad, you could be dealing with coryza, which might require a sulfa antibiotic. I would cull a bird with coryza, since it is a much nastier disease.

 

[M Claire]

Thanks Eggcessive, yes, Tylan would be good to have on hand. I should find a pharmacy that can order it. I have some Baytril in my farm supplies, but was hesitant to use that right out of the gate.

Our hatchery supplier systematically vaccinates again coryza, Marek's, swollen head syndrome, gumboro, and the form of mycoplasmosis for which there is a vaccine in Europe, so I have peace of mind that it cannot be any of those. But there are many dozens of diseases that affect chickens, with poultry sites often listing "the top 10" or "the top 12", which simply underscores the fact that lots of things can make them sick.

 

[M Claire]

Just popping back in to say that the sick hen in question did make a full recovery and has not had any symptoms since being treated with the "home remedy".