Neighbour making formal noise complaint.

[Rustyangel]

One of my girls had a bit of a cough when we first rescued her from the farm. Our local avian vet has had her on Baytril then Tylan and neither has made any difference. She lays an egg every day, is always one of the first in the food queue and fine in every other way although she does look a bit pale around the chops. There is no runny nose and all of the girls have been treated for mites and worms recently.

 

One of the other hens started showing signs of lice today, so this evening my hubby and I decided to give all of the girls a careful and light dusting with DE powder. All went well except that within ten minutes the girl with the cough was really struggling to breathe. It was almost as thought the dusting caused her to have an allergic reaction. She looked like she was having an asthma attack, really craning her neck and gasping. I picked her up, caried her out of the run and sat in a quiet spot in the garden with her on my lap, wishing I had an oxygen tent! To be honest I had tears running down my face, absolutely certain that my girl was going to die in my arms . She was really finding it hard to breathe at all and in between gasps was letting her head go limp and shutting her eyes. I was sat there telling her not to give up ....it was like a scene from Rocky!

 

After ten minutes like this she suddenly opened her eyes and jumped off my lap, then started pecking around on the patio!!! Her breathing slowly returned to normal (for her) and she wolfed down a big load of food I put down before following me into the run to rejoin her pals. It's taken me half a bottle of Merlot to feel calm enough to write this down (what can I say, it's been a bad week!). I'm not sure whether she has an allergy which causes asthma or just deserves a flipping oscar!!!

 

I will be talking to the vet tomorrow but blimey she gave me a scare. Anyone heard of a chicken with allergies or asthma?

 

Debs

[redfrock]

Have you wormed her? We think Orla had gape worm when she came to us last year and I am wondering if this is what your girl may have. It might be beneficial to give them a course of Flubenvet

 

edit to say - its late and I should have read your post twice first - you have already said you have wormed them recently. Sorry

[Egluntyne]

There are a few articles on 'tinterweb which suggest that inhalation of diatom can cause respiratory distress, so maybe your hen is particularly sensitive to it.

[Mel (& Paul)]

And I have heard that chickens might have a cough if there is dust around (eg. in their bedding) - we use shredded paper and aubiose to keep the dust down (dont even mention the dust in our house.... )

I'll see if I can find out a bit more.........

[Cazjohn]

One of our ex-batts has had breathing problems since we got her she does the same - looks like shes having an asthma attack then five minutes later bombing around with the rest of them.

 

If you feel her front it feels as if there's something not quite right and we always handle her very gently because her breathing gets much worse when shes stressed.

 

Other than that she been happily doing chickeny things for 15 months.

[BeckyBoo]

Yes we've got one that looks like she's got gapeworm, stretching her nexk and breathing with her mouth open sometimes, even though she's been wormed so it can't be that. She's never feathered up like the others either and she doesn't cluck, she hisses. But she's happy in her scrawny spikey feathered way and if she's happy so am I.

Bloomin' chickens, there's always something to worry about isn't there?

 

Mrs Bertie