Hisnabiddy Shiva

The Hisnabiddies are dying one by one!  We are in distress, as you might imagine.  Cecily is bereft….Hercules bit the dust today, and Betty is not far behind.

We are just mystified as to why this is happening.  It seems to have started not long after we brought the new white chickens into the Chick-Inn.  Everyone was fine until one of them wasn’t.  It was Purtz.  She just started having breathing difficulties and within 3 or 4 days she was toast.  It was very traumatizing.

We cleaned the coop, started using diametaceous earth, examined their poop in great detail (not my favorite part of the post mortem, I can assure you!)  We could not figure out what was going on, because shortly thereafter, another of the white hens, Thelma started going downhill.  Then it was Cechman.....

Cecily spent hours on the internet researching exotic chicken diseases and how we might counteract what was happening.  We have been in regular contact with the folks at the Agricultural Extension service who have been stumped by our problem as well.

After Thelma expired we even considered an necropsy with a fowl expert, but turned away from that rather quickly when we discovered it would cost us hundreds of dollars.  So we waited somewhat resignedly for the next one to give up the ghost.

In the meantime, Goldstein and Buckley turned into roosters!---big surprise when we thought we were buying all hens!  The two of them started strutting and swaggering about two weeks ago and Hercules started acting lethargic.  We weren’t sure whether Hercules was coming down with whatever the others had suffered from, or whether he was just depressed that he was not the Head Cock.  He has been on a downward slide since then and this afternoon he is near death. 

Betty, the Rhode Island Red who came with Hercules is also on the way out.  She is sitting on the bottom of the coop just being….well… deathlike.

So now we have 4 white chickens left, and one of them, Louise, has been ill for the past week.  We have tried force-feeding them antibiotics, super cleaned the coop and tried to make it as antiseptic as possible.  Nothing seems to be stopping what seems like an inexorable process of losing these birds one by one.  We think we might have a fouled coop, or maybe one of the white birds arrived with a virus or bacterial thing.  Or we might be struggling with a Hanta virus from the rodents that abound in the wild outside.

As an aside, we have stopped getting any eggs as of about 8 weeks ago.  We attributed it to the heat, after all it is summer in Florida and it is beastly out there during the day.

The tragedy of all this is that we have become attached to the damn birds and when they pass it is very disturbing.  Our neighbors on either side of us each have a flock that is doing just fine, and we can’t figure out what the problem is with our birds.

We have done all we can, so all we can do is continue to feed them well, water them well, treat them with antibiotics and see what happens.  I will let you all know what happens.  Feels a little weird, but I will ask you all to pray for the birds…they need some help!

If the time comes when they are all gone, we might give up eating chicken and eggs for a while.

Anybody have any ideas?