Pox Question??

As some here know i'm battleing Fowl Pox and both kinds the dry is almost under control and the wet has affected 3 chickens that are isolated and i'm doing the iodine mouth swabs and it appears to be cureing that.
I know the battle isn't over.................................
I have cleaned and disinfected my area and doing my best to practice perfect bio security.
But getting very sick myself and not being able to treat my flock for the last 2 days as i should have i found a hen with her eye swollen shut and the side of her head swollen and i put her down..................
My question is should i be giveing the ones that aren't affected Terramycin as a preventative measure????

Is anybody going to answer my question?

well I am sure I know I cant. Maybe the other views dont know either.

Harmony - No, I would not do it. Terramycin is an antibiotic. Antibiotics treat bacterial infections. Pox is a virus. It will have zero effect on preventing pox. Absolutely zero. If you are asking whether it would affect the eye-swollen-shut-swollen-head thing, I don't know, because I don't know what caused that. It seems more likely that the symptoms are some kind of pox related thing, I would guess. Even if it is bacterial, I don't know if terramycin would be the most effective antibiotic. So I would not treat, but I tend to be conservative with antibiotic use because of the dangers of breeding superbugs, etc.

Sorry to be brief - at work.
Hugs,
Claire

Sorry, Harmony--I was answering at work when my boss stepped in. I'm home now for lunch.

You are really going through it now. I am so sorry. Generally I would agree with Moxon on no antibiotics for a viral disease and for the same reasons--but if you have good reason to think there are secondary infections starting up I might consider a systemic antibiotic. But again--you almost need a sample analyzed to identify the bacteria to know if you are helping--or opening them up to other infections. If it just a question of applying an antibiotic cream to a lesion--that might help and I don't think you would hurt them--but saline solution would probably do as well. Very hard call--but you have taken up a mighty cause for one so sick and I think you need to do whatever you can to make it feel manageable. How are you doing yourself?

I don't have any birds sick or that aren't sick on anything but vitamins and was just wondering if antibiotics would work fighting off the internal pox as in the inflamation it's causeing.
I also wondered if it could prevent the out break of pox in the ones that are well.

I really just been lookin for about anything i hated to find today one little hens eye and head was swollen and i had to put her down but i was sick myself and my hubby is very limited on chicken knowledge and i wasn't able to do anything.

The iodine has been working great can not complain it has cured a hen that was just a week ago had growths in her throat and now has just a small scab on her beak.
My roo who i will do anything to save i love this chicken and he just has to survive he has it on his tounge and hes responding to the iodine real well but it's slower than the hen.
The other hen has it in her throat and it to is responding to the iodine her sister has a pox on her ear and i'm on that one and it looks better.
All the ones that had the single pox"s on their combs have now healed with the iodine treatment and no more chickens have shown signs of Dry pox.
But it's the ones that have up to this point had no symptoms that worry me and thats why the question of antibiotics.
But then as you said it could interfere with their immune system and cause them to succumb to this instead of keeping it at bay.
The ones that have it do you think the antibiotics could make them worse?

You have no idea how this has worried me i cleaned and disinfected for 2 days and was so tired and stressed and didn't sleep until i believe thats why i became sick and had to go to the emergency room tuesday morning. The doctor said it was a stomach virus but i think it was agravated by my axhaustion i slept all day tuesday and most of wednesday and today i'm feeling better.

I just really wish this was over it has seemed to just drag on and on and it's hard to keep a stiff upper lip when you fell like you take 2 steps forward today and 2 back tomarrow.


***Harmony***^_^

The antibiotics won't help at all with the viral pox--the most they will do is limit secondary infections--which it doesn't sound like you have. I would not give them to apparently healthy birds--it won't keep them from getting the virus and it could upset their systems in other ways and make them more run down and susceptible to disease.

I would put your energy into treating as you have been and looking into very high nutrition and maybe some immune boosting herbs. Its is not my specialty--but someone here should know. TF would, but she is incommunicado at the moment. Garlic is always good and ACV.

Anyone know what else would give them a temporaty boost? Echinacea?

Hi again Harmony,

Definitely the antibiotics will have no effect on the ones that have pox, and will not prevent pox from occurring in the ones who are healthy. It would only cure or prevent bacterial infections, which is definitely not pox. I would not do it at all. Plus, as you know in people, antibiotics can kill off the "good bacteria" in our gut, as well as the bad ones. Therefore, giving it to your birds could even affect them negatively, especially when their immune systems are already challenged.

That's my 2 cents (or 5 cents?)

Glad to hear that you are starting to feel better. :-)
Claire

Claire/Cat I guess i already knew it but just thought maybe............Wishful thinkin...............

I have never used antibiotic for that same reason Cat all the antibiotic resistant diseases now.
My perspective is allways been good nutrition and clean enviroment is all a chicken needs to be healthy.
Haveing chickens as long as i have the only thing i've had is cocidiosis i don't think i spelled that right and thats easily cured.
This is a hard pill to swallow and it is a heavy burdan and all i want is for it to turn out on the side of good.
Thanks and i apreciate you talkin to me and it helps just to be heard.

I just wish I was closer Harmony, to come help you out when you are feeling so exhausted and unwell. It is a miserable thing to be coping with all of this at once. I hope you are taking good care of yourself as well as the chickens, and that DH is helping out as much as he can. You deserve to rest your body and get well.

These things happen to the best of us (and to our chickens!)
Claire

Sounds like you are doing all you can do. I am so sorry I have no other help for you.


Fowl Pox, Pox, Avian Pox
Related Products:
Trovac AIV H5

Extracted From:

A Pocket Guide to
Poultry Health
and
Disease

By Paul McMullin
© 2004


Introduction
A relatively slow-spreading viral disease characterised by skin lesions and/or plaques in the pharynx and affecting chickens, turkeys, pigeons and canaries worldwide. Morbidity is 10-95% and mortality usually low to moderate, 0-50%. Infection occurs through skin abrasions and bites, or by the respiratory route. It is transmitted by birds, fomites, and mosquitoes (infected for 6 weeks).

The virus persists in the environment for months. It is more common in males because of their tendency to fight and cause skin damage, and where there are biting insects. The duration of the disease is about 14 days on an individual bird basis.

Signs

Warty, spreading eruptions and scabs on comb and wattles.
Caseous deposits in mouth, throat and sometimes trachea.
Depression.
Inappetance.
Poor growth.
Poor egg production.
Post-mortem lesions

Papules progressing to vesicles then pustules and scabs with distribution described above.
Less commonly there may, in the diptheritic form, be caseous plaques in mouth, pharynx, trachea and/or nasal cavities.
Microscopically - intra-cytoplasmic inclusions (Bollinger bodies) with elementary bodies (Borrel bodies).
Diagnosis
A presumptive diagnosis may be made on history, signs and post-mortem lesions. It is confirmed by IC inclusions in sections/ scrapings, reproduction in susceptible birds, isolation (pocks on CE CAM) with IC inclusions. DNA probes.

Differentiate from Trichomoniasis or physical damage to skin.

Treatment
None. Flocks and individuals still unaffected may be vaccinated, usually with chicken strain by wing web puncture. If there is evidence of secondary bacterial infection broad-spectrum antibiotics may be of some benefit.

Prevention
By vaccination (except canary). Chickens well before production. Turkeys by thigh-stick at 2-3 months, check take at 7-10 days post vaccination. There is good cross-immunity among the different viral strains.

Thanks Innbetween mine seems to lie somewhere inbetween all that (not a pun).
Mine have or had the pox but it never had pus or as i read somewhere they didn't join or become worse.
I like to think my flocks strong immune systems has something to do with it i raise my flock as naturaly as possible.
I treated the dry pox with only the iodine and nothing else and the mouth pox is responding to the iodine swabbing as well.
My main concern is the spread and just the final outcome and how long it will last and who is going to come down with it next.
I only have one hen now with dry pox and 3 with wet pox or as i call mouth pox and one hen with 1 pox on her ear.
The mouth pox reminds me of a cancer when i first saw it in my hens mouth it looked like cottage cheese only pale yellow and it was attached to the inside of her mouth and went down her throat.
It came loose very easy and bleed a little and it had swollen her widepipe i removed all i could and swab it with iodine and it didn't come back like it was only her windpipe stayed swollen.
I have treated her for about a week and a half and now she only has a small scab on her beak.
It seems once you remove the growth and swab it daily it reduces some everyday.
The roo is worse his is attached to his tounge and i'm afraid it may deform it and it has been hard to remove but his has reduced some and i think if i keep at it he will recover.
The other hen's is like the first and hers i assume will be treatable like the first.

Thank you for all your input and i appreciate the thought i'm doing better and back to fighting this thing and i intend to win!

Harmony,
Naive question here... how in the world do you find these things? I mean, I never look in my girls' mouths. Do you have some sort of routine check you are doing on your birds or were they doing something that made you look in their mouth?

Lazy_Lady I'm constantly looking at my birds it's just something I've trained myself to do.
But with the pox they tend to swallow like something is in their throat i hold them on their back and its not easy and simply open their mouth with my free hand.
I've been clipping beaks for years and it's a learned behavior as far as holding them.

I spend alot of time with my birds and i look for everything eyes,nose,mouth, i check vents regularly for mites and i listen to them how they crow or if one isn't crowing. My hens should always be singing or clucking and if not i want to know why.
This was how i was able to catch the dry pox before it got any worse by just looking and observing my flock.

Harmony, are you using pure iodine or a diluted form or what? I would like to know so that I can have some on hand in case I ever have chickens with this dreadful problem. It is good to know someone has had the experience that can help us all through it. Thank you for sharing, even though I know it must be hard to talk about.

Yes, I believe you have a very healthy flock that's why I ask. I want to make sure I do the same for my girls.

When Anya was sick I looked in her mouth because of something you said... MAN was that a pain! She was constantly shaking her head out of my hand, shutting her mouth, etc... It was quite the trick.

We are still socializing the birds a bit. So I tend to look them over when I'm holding them. I'll have to think more about making it part of some routine though.

Thanks again for your helpful information!
Kristin

Claire it's 10% iodine got it at walmart and i put a small amount in one of those small dixie bathroom cups and use a clean cotton swab.
It's painful for the chicken when you do the mouth swab so be gentle but firm.
When i did the comb i just covered the warts.

I use iodine on all wounds it just seems to heal so well.

Great - good to know! Thank you!

I have a question the first iodine i used on my blue roo was a tincture of iodine in a small bottle i had forever.
Well earlier this week i noticed that it had alcohol in it i think it was like 14%.

Now do you think the alcohol helped with the healing of the dry pox on that roo they seemed to go away alot faster than the one's i treated with the 10% iodine?

Alcohol dries could that have been what dries them up so fast?
Doe's iodine dry up sore's or just kill the infection?

I would think the alcohol helped, obviously not from my library of chicken knowledge, but just a practical standpoint.

My little bottle is empty and i had thought of putting about 1/25 to the iodine for the one hen with the dry pox??

I wasn't going to use that on the mouth pox as i think that would be very painful for the chicken
Alcohol OUCH!

I would think the alcohol would help too.

Okay i will refill my bottle and add a little alcohol thanks yall!

I guess I disagree with the advice to avoid using an antibiotic. What you are trying to do with an antibiotic during fowl pox is PREVENT a secondary infection while their immune system is already depressed from fighting the virus.

Listerine is another good thing to treat the lesions with.

Suze i choose not to use the antibiotic for fear it could weaken their system causeing the pox to be worse.
This could or could not be a mistake so far the one's that are or almost well have done very well and show no other signs of any illness.
The alcohol question i ask above i have done that with my little bottle i put about half a bottle of iodine and a dash of alcohol.[not a measurer i cook that way too]
The alcohol solution has helped a hen that the pox has really eaten up her comb and the plain iodine was just not doing it for her.
I still have alot of questions about this and i "can't" find common answers only the technical explanations which are informative but i and we need personal hands on a chicken information before, during, and after thats why i'm posting as much as i can about my experience with it.

Nice to see you here!

**Harmony**

Some info from NE VACCINE website on Antibiotics and their resistance:

Antibiotic Resistance
Reduced sensitivity to non-therapeutic antibiotics, plus the concern that feeding these drugs to poultry and livestock may increase the risk for antibiotic-resistant infections in people, is initiating significant changes in the poultry industry.

For many years, antibiotic growth promoters and ionophore anticoccidials, which have antibacterial action, have had the inadvertent benefit of controlling a variety of diseases in poultry. With prolonged use, however, antibiotic resistance has developed, minimizing their effectiveness.

Though controversial, there is also concern that antibiotic-resistant infections in poultry and livestock could transfer to people, which has already prompted European regulators to ban the use of several in-feed antibiotics in food animals.

A similar movement is under way in the United States, where it has largely been instigated by consumers and is evidenced by the soaring growth of organic poultry sales.

In addition, U.S. legislators have proposed The Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, which would prohibit the use of several non-therapeutic antibiotics in food animals.

These trends are prompting an increasing number of poultry producers to search for alternative methods of disease control, such as vaccination, better quality nutrition and other management changes.

Also, an example on what Claire was talking about...Breeding SUPERBUGS:
This is SCARY! I am sooooo going to grow my own organic chix food :) And, no, I'm not over-reacting...have wanted to grow all my own organic grains, etc. for a while...this just helps light a fire under my butt!

Bacteria Resistant to Powerful Antibiotics Are Discovered in Chicken Feed
By DENISE GRADY
Published: February 26, 1999
Bacteria that are resistant to the most powerful antibiotics used to treat infections in people have been found in chicken feed, researchers are reporting, a finding that is likely to fuel concerns about the threat to public health from widespread use of antibiotics.

The researchers studied only a small amount of feed. Still, they said, finding such organisms on the threshold of the human food supply was an ominous sign. They said their discovery might be the first report of such contamination in the United States. The scientists, from the University of Maryland, are reporting their findings today in the British medical journal The Lancet.

Although animal feed is not expected to be germ free and the bacteria were not harmful to healthy people, the organisms' ability to withstand potent antibiotics may pose a threat to public health, the scientists said. If people who eat or handle contaminated chicken become infected, the harmless bacteria may pass their genes for drug-resistance to other, dangerous organisms. Or, in patients with lowered immunity from AIDS or treatments for cancer or organ transplants, the once-harmless microbes may turn dangerous.

Illnesses caused by drug-resistant bacteria can be fatal, or require treatment with several drugs. Such infections are increasing in the United States and Europe. Many scientists attribute the growing strength of microbes to the overuse of antibiotics, in people and in agriculture. Nearly half the 50 million pounds of antibiotics produced in the United States are used in animals, mostly as feed additives to promote growth.

In any population of bacteria, some may naturally be more resistant to antibiotics, and when infections are treated with the drugs, the resistant microbes may survive and multiply. Each time antibiotics are given, they may be less effective because more bacteria are resistant.

''Studies show that rather than a single bad strain in a hospital, there are hundreds, if not thousands,'' said Dr. J. Glenn Morris Jr., head of hospital epidemiology at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, and an author of the Lancet study, which was published as ''a research letter,'' a report less comprehensive than an article. ''The more we look, the more we find these multiresistant organisms everywhere. Where are they coming from?''

Dr. Morris said he and his colleagues, who had seen patients die from drug-resistant infections, thought the organisms might be coming from different sources and wondered if one might be food. They knew that in Europe, use of a powerful antibiotic in animal feed had been linked to resistant infections in both livestock and in people who ate meat from infected animals.

To find out whether some infections could come from what the animals ate, the researchers tested commercial chicken feed they had bought in a closed sack and opened under sterile conditions. They did not expect to find anything, Dr. Morris said, so they were shocked to find bacteria known as enterococci, normal inhabitants of the intestine in people and animals, that were resistant to multiple antibiotics.

Most disturbing, Dr. Morris said, the organisms were resistant to vancomycin, a powerful drug that was long considered the last line of defense against dangerous infections. But deadly infections resistant to the drug began showing up in people in the United States in the past few years. The organisms have never been detected in chickens in the United States, Dr. Morris said.

''If it's in feed,'' he added, ''it may subsequently show up in chickens and serve as another mode of introduction into human populations.''

Dr. Morris would not name the manufacturer of the feed and said he had no explanation for how it might have become contaminated, or how the enterococci became resistant to antibiotics. He said the feed did not contain antibiotic additives.

The nation's largest chicken producers use no bagged feed, said a spokesman for one, Tyson Foods, who said they make their feed.

Dr. Stephen F. Sundlof, director of the Center for Veterinary Medicine at the Food and Drug Administration, said he was puzzled by the report, because feed pellets were normally produced under such high temperatures and pressure that bacteria would die. But, Dr. Sundlof said, ''if the feed is contaminated, and from consuming that feed, our livestock become reservoirs for vancomycin resistant enterococci, then potentially we could have a problem.''

This is one of my primary concerns as Musicnotes pointed out, and this article expresses it well. I work in the agriculture industry, albeit crop based and not animal based, but I read a lot of the current ag research journals and I see the data and I don't like what I see. The same problem is occurring in humans and we need to recognize it and change practices. Too many antibiotics are administered to children with viral infections because their parent(s) wants the doctor to give a prescription and they aren't satisfied without one or think that the doc isn't doing their job. It takes a lot of work sometimes to convince people that a virus isn't affected by antibiotics, and that antibiotics mess up our own immune systems, not to mention those of animals, for the time that we are on them. This is one reason many people have adverse "digestive reactions" to antibiotics, to put it politely. That's not to say they aren't useful because they have saved countless thousands of lives and continue to do so every day, but their careful use is the most important factor. We need antibiotics for many bacterial infections, and the development of the resistant bugs leads to serious problems, such as multi-drug resistant TB, when the medical profession runs out of treatment options because none of the known ones will work any more. That is why I advocate only using antibiotics to treat an actual problem, and not as a preventive measure.

OMG, Claire, you are soooo right on the nose.
I just went through being very ill, w/ a sinus infection. When you get a fever, it's a sign of your body trying to rid itself of the infection. I had 102+ degree fever. While it lasted for over a week, I don't think antibiotics would have helped. I didn't get worse...so what I was doing at home was working. I got better...without antibiotics.
I used to be the one that NEVER got sick, then when I got health insurance I would go to the doctor's at the first sign of fever. NOT GOOD. I was given antibiotics everytime and told the same thing, "lotsa rest, lotsa fluids, saline rinses, steam, etc." It didn't make me get better any quicker.

For the last 2 years I have not used ANY antibiotics for my sinus infections, upper respiratory, etc...I get those a lot because of allergies and asthma. I have gone homeopathic with many remedies that ours and other cultures have used for centuries. There are so many NATURAL antibiotics out there, it is amazing. Garlic, yogurt, cheeses, along with micronutrients that you can buy at the health food store. That's not to say that when I go get myself cut open I'm going to have them put garlic juice in my I.V.! But there is a time and place and overuse WILL soon create the superbug. It's proven scientific facts. Not just our opinion.

I'm going off now, but it is hard to change over. My next step is to find alternatives to my dog's yearly vaccinations. They are so poisonous, that my dogs have bad tummy, etc., side effects for several weeks after. Sometimes even a fever!

Now, to get going on my garden, berries, fruit trees, etc :) :) :)

~music