Chickens dying every week

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by Pauline Wheeler
(Enumclaw, WA)

Question

Chickens dying every week: They just die no respiratory distress or anything. They are kept clean in coup and side yard, away from all animals.

One just died in my arms last night. Seem listless so I picked her up and she just died. A lot of fluid came out her nose and beak?

Could this be anything? I ran up to feed store and they gave me some antibiotic to add to their water.

Starting there. I had 7 now down to 4.
One the one that just died she had no bugs on her whatsoever and there stools are not diarrhea. Show 0 signs of sickness, within 3 days they die.

Answer
So sorry this is happening. The best thing to do is get one of these chickens to the vet for testing.

To lose nearly half your flock is hard and unless they got into something toxic this sounds like a highly contagious disease. Not knowing what color this fluid was makes it hard to pinpoint a specific disease.

Some diseases can lie dormant until stress of some sort causes immune system weakness. Things that can stress chickens are considerable change in environment, shipping or moving, predator attacks or stalking, extreme temperature, dietary changes and deficiencies, One becoming so sick that it dies has become very dangerous to the health to the others.

That’s why it’s so important to separate a sick chicken from the flock. Disease can be passed through the air, droppings, discharges from mouth and nares, and in some cases even the dander of their feathers and skin.

If you plan to replace the chickens that died you really need testing done to find out which disease it is and if it’s safe to bring new chickens in.

Hopefully the antibiotic you found is the right one that can stop this disease. Water born antibiotics may not be the most effective way to administer.

Antibiotics are generally effective against bacterial infections and have little success with viruses and fungal infections.

Antibiotics might cure secondary infections caused by disease, but may not get rid of the disease its self.

When treating chickens with antibiotics it’s important to follow up with probiotics to restore good digestive health.

Antibiotics can kill off good bacteria that help chickens absorb all possible nutrients from food. Hope this helps and you can save the rest of your chickens.

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