We had fowl pox in some young birds a couple of years ago and lost 3 of them and one lived but is blinded in one eye. Our older chickens had it as well a year or so before that because they had the lesions on the combs/waddles but seemed to breeze through it okay otherwise.
We now have some chicks that are about 3 months to 5 months in age that are showing signs of it. Sores on the combs/waddles and some on the beak of a couple of them. They so far seem to be doing okay and are eating normally and active, it has been a couple of weeks since we first noticed it. I'm guessing that the older the chickens the better they fare? The roos we have in these young birds were going to become dinner. Will it still be safe to eat them if they had fowl pox?
We fared through the summer fairly well mosquito wise, usually we have a ton of them and of course fowl pox is transmitted by mosquitos, but about a month or so ago we started getting mosquitos and of course the fowl pox.
Also, does anyone have any remedies for it? We have put collodial silver in their water and even soak bread in it and let them eat it. Anything else we can do?
Fowl Pox...again...have questions.
I think, if they have lesions in their mouths that make it hard for them to eat or breath, you are suppose to sort of scrape or in some other way remove it....otherwise I think it is just supportive care.
We had a strain of Fowl Pox here that was very mild...only one or two chickens developed serious lesions and they recovered well. The majority of chickens in the flock never developed symptoms...and those that did had hardly anything more than a pox or two on their combs and wattles.
I am not sure about age making it more or less severe--but that would make sense. I do know that, in general, the severity of symptoms is related to the strain and the individual bird's immune status.
Ours was so weak, we sort of considered it "free vaccinations".
Thanks Catscan. I think in most the birds so far it is a weak outbreak. There are however, 3 or 4 that have more scabbing on the combs and waddles and I think two that have some on the beak. Hard to tell if there is anything in the mouths, you know how hard it is to pry a chickens mouth open, but they all seem to be eating normally. One that has some lesions on his waddles was sitting a lot yesterday with his eyes closed but would jump up when we brought food and eat. Today he is acting more normal.
It does make some miserable...and you don't want it to go in their eyes...but otherwise most do seem to make a good recovery.
I think it is a bigger problem for commercial growers--where a drop in egg production or growth is a big concern and the virus spreads wildly due to crowding and stress.
Apparently it sort of hangs out in the enviornment too and takes a couple weeks to develop--so you can get sporadic cases of it over several weeks.
yeah, I figure it may spread about even though the ones we first noticed it on are not together with others. The second pen of 5 month olds started showing it this week, they are next to our Silkies so they may get it too. The others are all a good distance from these. I just hope it doesn't spread to the 3 new baby chicks we have, they are only a week old. They arn't near them though.
Catscan wrote;"...and you don't want it to go in their eyes"
That's good to know. Any hope that an antibiotic eye ointment might protect from eye involvement? Works with cats, but cats. aren't chickens, and I don't know if Fowl Pox is bacterial or viral (though I will in a few minutes{G}).
I wouldn't try ointment--it is viral and some people have noticed that putting oily things on the lesions makes them worse.
Since it's viral, it's not going to help with prevention, but I was speaking of using it _in_ the eye, not on the lesions:). I tend to worry about secondary bacterial infections even when to primary infection is viral, but that's just me, and I have no idea if it's valid in this case.
I don't think anyone has really studied this--but anecdotally, people have had better luck putting "treatments" that are drying on the lesions. Antibiotic ointments may help protect against secondary infections...but these don't seem to be a common complication and a systemic antibiotic might be better for those.
The observation has been that when ointments were used the lesions seemed to grow worse and maybe even increase in number. Since you wouldn't need to worry about a secondary infection in the eye, unless the virus had entered it, I wouldn't try to use it prophylactically. If it did get in the eye--maybe antibiotic drops would help?
You will know if the infection has gotten to the eye. It may start with a lesion on the eyelid itself and then spread to the eye. When you see the lesion would be time to do something. One of our Blue Cochins that had Fowl Pox about 2 years ago lost her eye to it. It started with a lesion just above the eye or on the eyelid. She is blind in that eye but does well. That was our first of a worse case Fowl Pox. The chicks were quite young though and we lost 3 to it, our older chickens had it a year or so before that but all seemed to recover well, I think that second batch was just too young at the time.
This brought back bad memories. We had a terrible outbreak here about 3( or was it 4) years ago. I'll have to go back abnd check my records and my photos. I had never heard of the pox before the lesions started on two of my Millefleurs, then spread rapidly over my entire flock. I posted here on DG and found there wasnt much I could do, but just keep their pens clean and keep infection down by separation.
I still dont know where or how they contracted it. I just knew that I had brought home 7 older Hens from a yard sale. Within a week my birds were infected, even though the new girls were in Quarintine. The newer Hens did not show lesions but were sickly. I lost about 5 of my hens and 2 young turkeys that were all very healthy before the new comers arrived.
Thank Heavens I havent had any more outbreaks of any kind since then. My worry now is that I never knew about mosquitos being the culprit. Is there anything that can be put into the waterers that will kill mosquitoes and not harm my Birds?
Goldfish . But that's probably not practical for chicken waterers. Works well in livestock tanks, though.
If you dump and rinse the waterers at least every other day, and scrub once a week, the larvae wont have a chance to become 'skeeters.
Funny You mentioned that!! I used Goldfish in my goat waterers years ago and they were great skeeter catchers. I tried them in smaller trough waterers for my Chickens and It was a total disaster. The Chickens thought it was their very own Fishing derby with fresh fish every night for supper!!
{G} we had chicken wire over the top when I did it for the chickens. They could get far enough in to get a drink, but not a fish. After one successful grab, the fish caught on that they needed to stay away from the edges....