DuckRunner submitted a new Article: How to diagnose coccidiosis in chickens Read more about this article here...
Hi, great articles. I just want to add my experiences. If a chick looks sick, and we know what sick looks like, there's a 99% chance it's coccidiosis with or without dehydration and starvation. If you medicate, make sure they get it! Only one of 6 types of coccidiosis cause bloody stools. You can't say if there's no blood it's not cocci. Same goes for medicated feed or cocci vaccine. These do not guarantee that your chick is not sick with cocci. They are only preventative. There's no realistic way of removing cocci from a chick's environment. If your chicks look sick, make sure they are hydrated, have calories, and possibly treat for cocci. They go downhill fast. I've had good luck with tube feeding and/or using a 1 ml. Syringe and inserting it to the back of their throat. This way you have gone past their trachea.
There are two types of the nine types of cocci that chickens get that Corid will not treat. Those happen to be the two types that cause blood in feces. By the time blood is seen in feces, it's too late to treat the birds. However, recognizing the above symptoms is the key to prevention and sulfa drugs will be needed ie, sulmet, sulfadimethoxine, SMP/TMP. Good info above.
I thought there were 9 types of cocci but chickens get only one of 6 different types. I have only had one bloody one in 10 years. I believe it was treated with sulfadimethoxine at the time.
http://web.uconn.edu/poultry/poultrypages/diseasefactsheet.html https://www.merckvetmanual.com/poultry/coccidiosis/overview-of-coccidiosis-in-poultry E. Tenella and E. Necatrix cause blood in droppings and require sulfa treatment, corid will have no effect on these two killers.
