Chicks - Coccidiosis

 As you may have noticed earlier, I've been having a bit of difficulty with hatching eggs recently. So to tell you that we lost two of our chicks hurts. They've got coccidiosis, an intestinal disease, that I have never dealt with before. That was the day I found out that my father had purchased non-medicated chick starter instead of medicated. So my father wanted to raise a few Black Copper Marans. So I left them all with him, including anything I thought was a cockerel. The Blue Australorp that hatched first, ended up with wry neck. Which is normally caused by a vitamin deficiency, genetics, or an injury. Another reason why we should have done medicated? Maybe. Not really sure. While giving her vitamin E and selenium, she injured her leg and it needed to be splinted. So I left her there. She is better and home with me now. I did bring home a younger Black Australorp.  She just sort of sat there, had tucked.  Didn't really struggle when I picked her up.  I knew something was wrong.  I brought her home to keep an eye on her.  That's when I saw the blood.  And I'm not just talking about a little bit of intestinal lining, it was blood.  The next evening I found her face down in the corner of the coop. I though she was dead but noticed a slight movement.  I brought her in the house and warmed her up to the point where she was blinking and peeping softly.  The next morning she was dead.

Two days later my father told me that one of the BCM chicks died.  He said he saw blood.  That same day, I also saw more blood, though I'm not sure which chick it was coming from.  I sent my husband to the feed store on the way home to pick something up.  All he could find was a disinfectant. That night I went to the only vet in town that deals with farm animals and after doing my research, I asked for Amprolium. (Corid I think is what they use in the US)  I wasn't able to talk to a vet so I had to wait until the next day to get the meds.  I spoke to the vet on the phone, she needed to know how many birds I had, how old they were, and how much water they were getting, so she could give me the right mount and dosage.  So I won't go into how much you should give them.

They're almost through their second week and we've not had any more fatalities, blood, or sickness.  In a few weeks I will decide if I want to start integrating them into the flock, or leave them out back in the little coop.