I'm having a lot of trouble with my chickens right now.
It started with the normal worm issue that we have at the beginning of each year; two birds died, I thought OK. That normally happens, I'd been worming them for a couple days, and nobody else seemed sick, so I thought we were good.
Then two more chickens died; completely out of nowhere. I added vitamins and electrolytes to their water to go along with the DE in their food.
Today, I've lost four more chickens. All precious, expensive little babies that I hatched in my room and have babying for their short number of weeks. The others look kind of puny, but no other chickens appear ill. I put Sulfa-Med in their water instead of the other stuff today, to treat for Cocci, which I don't think they have exactly (no blood in poop, just worm-infection symptoms) but I figured it couldn't hurt.
The babies are isolated from the main flock, and were the healthiest of everybody for a while, so I'm hoping that this plague is about through. After the Sulfa-Med, I have no idea what else to give them. I've done my research, and have looked over everything in the lot, and no blood at all that suggests Cocci. Perhaps this round of worms is just worse then last year's? Even then we lost several birds, and a good deal of them laying and full-grown.
Luckily the infection hasn't reached my pumpkin hulseys, which I'm guarding with my life in my bedroom. It's also not reached the guineas, Pirate the one-eyed frizzle (the one that runs around our backyard 24-7,) or the Mama gamehen and her single baby. I'm going to give them until tomorrow, and if they're more deaths, I'm moving birds and cleaning out the coops, and moving pens outside of the lot if I have to with my babies. Hopefully this Sulfa-Med stuff will help; if it does, there shouldn't be any more deaths by tomorrow, unless the birds are too far gone already.
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Of the birds I lost, I'm sorry to say on of the hens we got from the Braud family was the first to go; a black sex-link hen. I also lost Shawn Spenstar, the frizzled cochin baby, two mottled cochin roos (least they were roos I guess) a blue oprington, and three lavender ameraucanas. What I've noticed is that the babies die much, much faster. I was fighting for the sex-link hen for a couple days before she died. You could tell she was ill, but these babies just get sick out of nowhere and are dead the next day at the most, so it could still be worms I guess. We'll see. I'm continuing to research it, and hopefully it's over.
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