Rural Gardening: Fowl Pox and Bug zappers, 1 by vnickdd

vnickdd wrote:
Anyone out there had a fowl pox outbreak? Ours started about 6 weeks ago in one of our unnamed girls (who now is fine and has acquired a fitting name: Pox). I, being the dutiful coop captain, immediately went on a google freak-out session and prepared to order anitbiotics, vaccines and the like from all over, since the web makes it sound like you'll be sure to lose chickens during such an outbreak. Some of the info said "do not give vaccines to chickens showing symptoms" so I went back and checked and all the ladies had at least some scabbing on their combs, except our senior hen, "Oma Chicken" who still hasn't developed any. I was dismayed and ended up not ordering any vaccine and spent the next month worrying about it. They got daily checks to make sure they had no mouth leisions (you can imagine how much they liked that).

There are still a few scabbies on some of the girls (none bigger than a pin prick). To keep it from happening again, I put a bug zapper in their little coop to keep skeeters off of them.

Two questions:
1. Anyone else think fowlpox is like chicken pox, a la just let them get it, get over it and move on (I suspect Oma Chicken never got it because she's had it before and I didn't notice) - also, has anyone had it in their flock, had it go away and come back to the same chickens again?

2. Anyone know if a chicken pecking a bug zapper will do them serious harm? I remember sticking forks in it as a kid (we were weird kids) and got about the jolt from one of those gardener's electric fences. It's well away from them and hanging up, but they're creative and I have these images of a bored chicken one dark night wanting to see what that blue glowing light up top tastes like.