Carol's Chickens

The milder weather seems to be helping the girls. Since the weather has turned milder there have been no eye bubbles. The sneezing has been a lot less but I can still hear the snuffly sound to Dandelion’s breathing. I think Dandelion is the weakest of the little girls.

This morning I hand fed them some spinach so that I could get some photos.

Freckles has some spinach

Speckles and Emerald

Apricot has spinach and Emerald photo bombs

Dandelion and Apricot have spinach

Emerald finishes the spinach leaf

Dandelion

Cinnamon

Apart from Dandelion being a bit snuffly I think they are looking a lot better. I just hope the next cold spell doesn’t set them back again.

Today we have our first full turkey Christmas celebration with my side of the family and little six month old grandson’s first Christmas. Christmas day will be just the two of us and then two days later a roast lamb celebration with my husband’s side of the family and two older grandchildren so it’s full on from today.

I would like to wish all my readers a very Happy Christmas and New Year and I will pop in with updates when ever I have time.

Over the last few days I have tried asking at local pet stores if any of them could get hold of denagard in a manageable amount. Nobody was able to help me. There seems nothing for it but to carry on with the current routine.

Throughout all of my research I haven’t found anyone who has used tylan for this long. I am having to trust my instincts here. I think if I stopped using it the girls may relapse. The daily tylan seems to be keeping them stable and doesn’t seem to be having any ill effects so I think I should just keep up with this regime even if I have to continue until spring.

I had expected to have had to make a horrible decision by now but the girls have remained stable so I think I must carry on as I am and keep hoping that they will eventually come through this.

Freckles and Dandelion remain the worse with occasional slight wheezing, occasional bubbles in their eyes and sneezing. Apricot and Cinnamon have occasional sneezing but other than that look okay. Emerald and Speckles seem to remain unaffected although they too sneeze occasionally. They are all eating well.

I am picking up loads of feathers from Freckles in the chicken shed in the mornings and she is looking quite tatty. Seramas are supposed to moult lightly all year round but Freckles is having the same sort of complete moult that the bigger girls have. I just hope the milder weather will help them.

I have had discussions with my vet today and we have run through all the options. Getting the denagard is proving to be very difficult and would be very costly. My vet has had talks with people who have farms as this was one of the leads I had been advised to follow up. The opinion was that the denagard may not make a difference and that when this situation has gone on so long the outcome may not be positive.

We decided that I would collect more tylan so that I have enough to last into the new year and that I would continue the current regime and we would assess the situation again in the new year. We talked about the difficult decision that may occur at a later date if it becomes obvious that there is no improvement. Our joint worry is that there may come a point where this has gone on so long that it is only being managed by the treatment and not being cured. There is also the possibility that the girls will become imune to the tylan if it is given long term.

My vet has spent time researching on my behalf and talking it through with me (twice today, morning and late afternoon) and I feel she is doing her absolute best for me but I know we are both agreed that we can only do so much and there will be a decision to be made in the new year, but we both agree that we don’t want to give up too soon.

It is so difficult to make a decision when there are moments when the girls seem really well in other ways. They were all dust bathing this morning. The next time I checked on them Freckles had lost her last remaining tail feather.

Oddly enough she was taking a real interest in the second grit box that is out in the run. With egg laying firmly a thing of the past at the moment, why the interest in the grit!

Freckles has lost her tail feathers today

The little girls gather together around Freckles

The little girls with Freckles firmly ensconced in the grit

Freckles at the grit

A tail less Freckles in the grit

What is this all about! Who knows what goes through their little chicken brains. They clearly haven’t given up yet and therefore neither can I.

I know that ultimately I have to make the decisions here but at the moment it is still too soon. Chickens usually very quickly get better or reach the point of no return but these girls seem to be defying that at the moment and while they are not giving in I can’t give in either. So for the moment it is a case of carry on with the routine, try to stay positive and hope for the best with everything crossed.

The girls have moments of looking brighter and moments of looking down again. In the morning when I let them out they look fine but then I hear the slight wheeze in Freckles and Dandelion’s breathing and hear sneezing from each of them at different times and I know that really they are not fine.

They are still eating three dishes, a day, of their mash with tylan water and ground poultry zest as well as drinking the tylan water.

It’s always when they perch up that I can see that they are not well. They were perched on the branch perch above the ladder in the sunny spot this morning when I checked on them. One of Dandelions eyes was so frothy that it looked as if it had frosted over. She didn’t seem able to blink it away like she usually does.

I tried stroking her to see if she would blink as she only barely tolerates being stroked. In fact the fact that she let me stroke her shows she is not her usual self. I then hand fed her some spinach leaves. I thought that the action of eating leaves would cause her to blink and clear her eye. She did manage to clear it while eating the spinach.

Dandelion’s eye has bubbles again

Freckles and Dandelion not looking good

I am so frustrated that they don’t seem to be getting better but then I have to remind myself that they are not getting worse either.

In three weeks Caramel went from coming into the flock to being put to sleep. She went from one eye swollen, to mucus oozing from her nostrils, rattly breathing and finally both eyes swollen shut. I have since read that there is no coming back from rattly breathing.

It has now been four weeks since this started and it is day sixteen of the second round of tylan. My feelings are that the daily tylan is keeping it under control and stopping it from progressing but not actually getting rid of it. I don’t know how long it is okay to keep going like this. I wish someone could tell me that in time they would get better.

The little girls congregate together at bedtime before going in the chicken shed

Top girl and oldest girl, Emerald, always goes into the chicken shed first each day. Speckles, surrogate mother, follows Emerald in and then comes out again several times, clucking to the little girls to tell them to go in. She gets very agitated and runs back and forth trying to encourage the little girls to go in. They take no notice of her!

In their own sweet time the little girls go in and they all snuggle up close together. I just don’t know how this is going to work out but I don’t know what else to do.

I have moments of thinking that the girls are improving and then they seem to slide back again. For three days I didn’t hear wheezing and and didn’t see any bubbles in their eyes. Yesterday afternoon they were perched in the shelter and I could hear the slight wheeze in Freckles and Dandelion’s breathing and once again they both had bubbles in their eyes.

Today I haven’t seen any bubbles but sometimes it may be a case of which moment I am watching them. The fact that both Freckles and Dandelion are moulting is really not helping matters, especially with it being so cold.

The forecast is for milder weather to come so I hope that will help them. I am resigned to this taking a long time and now wonder if I will need to keep them on tylan through the winter. I am continuing the daily regime of tylan in the water and three dishes of mash made with tylan water and a teaspoon of crushed poultry zest.

Freckles looking a bit tatty

Dandelion

Apricot

Cinnamon with a ridiculously full crop at the end of the day

I have said before that I wonder if Cinnamon is the most well because she eats the most and therefore gets a bigger dose of tylan. She is the smallest girl of all of them but has always been the one constantly feeding and always looks lopsided at bedtime because her crop is so full. Her comb is also the most red. She was also the only one still laying until recently but hasn’t laid for the past week.

I would think Cinnamon had escaped this if it wasn’t for hearing the occasional sneeze. Apricot only sneezes occasionally too but has had the wheeze in her breathing but that seems to have gone now. Freckles and Dandelion have been the worse effected with wheezing, eye bubbles and sneezing and Freckles sneezing the most of all.

The two bigger girls, Emerald and Speckles don’t seem to be effected, thank goodness. I am very up and down with how positive I feel about this but I think that for now there is nothing more I can do but carry on doing what I am doing and just keep hoping they will get better.

We don’t like to decorate for Christmas too early and generally do it two weeks before Christmas. This year however, with one thing and another, time somehow got away from us. We suddenly realised that it’s only a week to Christmas and we thought we had better swing into action.

I had a five pound off voucher for our local garden centre so we went there first to look for a tree. We were shocked at how expensive they were. They were much more than last year. They were priced at fifty and sixty pounds. We didn’t want to pay that sort of price especially as there is only a week until Christmas so we wouldn’t get value from it.

My husband remembered seeing a sign advertising Christmas trees for sale further up the road so we decided to go and take a look. We drove up a steep drive onto a muddy field with a small car park, a tent and piles of Christmas trees.

A man came out of the tent and asked if he could help us. I asked him what his cheapest Christmas trees were. Among the big piles of trees he took us to a small pile of just two trees. He said that they were twenty pounds and held one up for us. I said it wasn’t bad at all and was a bargain. I said we would take it.

We were really chuffed at our bargain and in fact it’s a better tree than we have had some years.

The tree is ready for decorating

I trimmed down the rather long branches at the top to give it a better shape.

The tree is decorated

I am really pleased with this tree. We put a wreath on the front door and put up the rest of the decorations in the sitting room and the dining room and hung the Christmas cards from ribbons in the dining room. We are now ready for Christmas.

My lovely vet ordered me in some denagard. She looked for the cheapest option as she had already talked to me about the fact that it is in big amounts for farming and there are no small options for backyard flocks.

I have paid ten and twenty pounds for tylan and the cheapest denagard was fifty pounds which came out at sixty pounds after the V.A.T. was added. Gulp! I ran it by my husband and we decided to go for it.

I went to my local vets to collect it and when the receptionist put it on the counter I did double take. Wow! That really was a big amount and was bigger than I had anticipated. I imagined going on the “Down The Lane” forum and telling anyone near me who wanted some that they should come to me and I would let them have some for free.

Denagard with my tylan bottle in front for comparison

I started to read the complex instructions for use. I had expected something to add to the water like the tylan but this was to be added to the feed. I could add it to their mash I thought. I tried to find the quantity but it gave an amount to be mixed with a ton of food. Uh oh! It also said that not enough wouldn’t be effective and too much would send chickens into toxic shock.

Oh goodness! This was going to be impossible for me to measure accurately and would be much too dangerous to risk using. I called the vet and explained the situation to the receptionist. She said my vet would call me back which she did and she said to take it back and get a refund. We discussed that the girls seem to be improving so we agreed that I should carry on as I am and update the her next week.

Today I continued with the daily regime of three dishes of mash with the ground poultry zest and tylan water. They girls were eating one of the two dishes at first but over the last few days they have eaten two of the three dishes and today they ate all three dishes, hurrah!

This afternoon they had a communal dust bath. I haven’t seen the whole flock dust bathing together for ages. This is a good sign that they are feeling better.

Communal dust bathing

Freckles helps Dandelion with her dust bath

All the girls dust bath together

There has been no bubbling in their eyes and the sneezing has been quite a bit less. I am really hopeful that we are getting there now.

This morning I made up three little dishes of mash with the tylan water and the ground poultry zest mixed into them. I put one dish by each shelter and one dish on the chicken’s patio.

By mid morning the dish by the big shelter was empty. I refilled it and by this time the little girls had moved to the small shelter.

The little girls are in the small shelter and not looking a picture of happiness!

This is when they seem to look their worse but there were no bubbles in their eyes and I couldn’t hear any wheezing in their breathing.

Emerald and Speckles are waiting for the sun to hit this spot

A bit later the little girls joined Emerald and Speckles in the sun.

I dug the run over yesterday and both yesterday afternoon and again this afternoon the girls were out scratching and pecking.

The girls scratch and peck in the run

Pecking in the run

It was so nice to see them being a bit more active. They had eaten most of their mash by the end of the day.

I really think we have finally turned the corner with this although I am still afraid of getting too carried away. They seem to be gradually getting better and sneezing less. I am hopeful that we are over the worse.

Its day twelve of the tylan and the first day of the poultry zest. I had asked for something that didn’t need to be administered to their beaks as getting anything in to all four little girls’ beaks would be a stressful task for them and me.

The poultry zest is in pellet form and it says to put a heaped spoon (measuring spoon enclosed) into the food for ten hens. We have six and four of them are very small so I guessed a slightly less than level spoon would do.

Poultry zest

I had a feeling that I would need to disguise it but as it smelt quite sweet (aniseed), I decided to try it, as it is first, and see and if they would go for it. I sprinkled it with some sunflower hearts on to the girls’ patio area.

As I expected they all picked out the sunflower hearts first. After they had gone the two bigger girls, Emerald and Speckles, hoovered up all the pellets and the little girls ignored them. Well that went well!

On to plan B. I then measured out another small spoon and put them on top of their mash, made with the tylan water and mixed them a bit. The little girls tried to avoid the poultry zest pellets. I can tell because they are yellow (turmeric) compared to the brown of their normal pellets. I’m not sure if it’s just because they look and smell different.

By the end of the day they had eaten nearly all of the mash so I was happy that they had had enough of the poultry zest. Tomorrow I will grind the poultry zest pellets to powder with my pestle and mortar and mix them into the mash made with tylan water. Hopefully that way they won’t notice them.

The girls seemed about the same as yesterday. They are still sneezing, Freckles the most, but I haven’t seen any bubbles in the eyes and I can only hear a very tiny whisper to Freckles breathing when she eats. They seem generally brighter. I think they are very slowly improving.

Yesterday I was feeling down as the girls seemed worse but today I am feeling more hopeful again. It has been much warmer today but wet. It has rained all day.

A wet day has all the girls in the big shelter

I left the girls with two dishes of mash with the tylan water by the shelter and one on their patio.

I was out for longer today as work was busier so I didn’t get to check on the girls until after lunch time. When I did check on them they looked brighter. They were scratching and pecking around and had eaten twice as much mash as the day before. This means they will have had twice as much of the tylan water, hurrah!

I couldn’t hear any wheezing in their breathing and they seemed to be sneezing less and there were no bubbles in their eyes.

I rang the vets and the poultry zest they had ordered for me was ready for me to collect. When I went to collect it I got the chance to talk to my lovely vet and she is going to order the denaguard for me.

So tomorrow I will start the girls on the poultry zest along with the tylan and as soon as the denaguard comes in I will switch to that. I don’t want to get too carried away but I am feeling much more hopeful today.

I am afraid everyone will get tired of me bouncing up and down with this but I just can’t help it. It almost seems like one step forward and two steps backward all the time. Every time I think I see a bit of improvement things seem to get a little worse again.

The last two days have been dull, almost dark in fact, miserable and wet. The girls spent most of the two days in the big shelter. Today was colder than it has been but it was dry, bright and sunny.

Mid morning the girls returned to their favourite spot in the sun.

The girls sit in the sun

On closer inspection I could see that Dandelion had bubbles in her eyes again.

Dandelion has bubbles in her eyes

Once the sun had moved from this spot the little girls returned to the small shelter. I bought the dishes of mash with the tylan water to the small shelter to encourage them to eat some.

I bring mash to the small shelter

Speckles decides to join in

Both Dandelion and Freckles have bubbles in their eyes again

This is worse today

I am seeing these two with bubbles in their eyes more frequently and the the wheezing sound has come back to their breathing.

I am on day ten of the planned twelve days of tylan so I will keep going for a few more days but I am constantly wrangling with how long I go on with this.

This has now been three weeks since the first signs of this and in my heart I know that the longer this goes on the less chance there is of a happy outcome. Freckles and Dandelion are just not shifting this and after moments of slight improvement they seem to worsen again. The bubbles in their eyes are now appearing more often but they are managing to blink them clear again. They seem to hit a low point in the afternoons.

I will call the local vets tomorrow to see if the vitamins have come in yet. My husband also suggested to give them their daily spinach once more as it contains vitamins and iron. I had stopped giving it to encourage them to eat the mash but now agree that it would be a good idea to go back to giving them some each day.

I hand fed the girls some spinach leaves dipped in the tylan water to try to get a bit more into them.

When I give them the bedtime corn you wouldn’t think there was anything wrong. They are at their most lively when scratching for every last bit of corn and digesting the corn helps them keep a bit of warmth at night.

Bedtime corn

Another couple of days of the tylan regime and then I will assess the situation again. I keep feeling my hopefulness waxing and waning but I am trying not to give up yet.