I have chickens in two separate pens but plan on keeping them all together. One set of chickens had what I believe was coccidiosis and 8 died. The only drug I could get was amprolium (sp?)which I administered for 2 weeks. The last day the chickens were on the medicine was Monday. None have died during those 2 weeks or since Monday, and all appear fine now. Do I need to give the other chickens amprolium as a precaution before introducing the chickens that had cocci to their pen?

-- John (something@somewhere.net), September 12, 2001

Answers

One symptom of coccidiosis is blood in the droppings. Here's a disease page; click on 'coccidiosis' to see if the symptoms are the same. Seems to me folks spread ag lime (the other kind isn't safe around the birds) over the whole area. You're also carrying/spreading the disease on your footwear. Tend to your healthy birds before the sick ones. Hope things improve.

-- ~Rogo (rogo2020@yahoo.com), September 12, 2001.

I had my first case this year brought on by heat stress, even though their house was clean, I came them a high dose of corrid which I bought at the feed store. Then water them down. But....I have sheep so I wore different shoes to do the sheep then the chix. One thing to lose a chix but a sheep..

-- Debbie (bwolcott@cwis.net), September 13, 2001.

Old farmer's trick that worked for me for 20 odd years: regularly feed your chickens tomatoes to prevent coccidiosis.

-- Earthmama (earthmama48@yahoo.com), September 13, 2001.

Earthmama,

Your coccy cure intrigues me. The more I think about it the basic poultry diet is fairly alkaline by nature, particularly with the calcium supplements that are often included. Seems to me that the tomatoes would cause the pH of the chicken's digestive tract to swing to the more acidic and that might be why the cooccidian protozoa would fail to thrive (and thus make the bird ill). This is all supposition on my part, I have no test data to back it up but it is an interesting idea.

={(Oak)-

-- Live Oak (oneliveoak@yahoo.com), September 13, 2001.