Blood in poo

I found this while looking in on another site and thought it was information worth passing along.

We hear a lot of talk about bloody poo meaning coccidiossis, and often it does. But coccidiossis is usually accompanied by other general symptoms like noticable lethargy, stiff walk, neck pulled in and short looking and of course the bloody poo. But there is another condition that causes bloody poo and dead birds without the typical symptoms of coccidiossis. It's called necrotic enteritis. It is caused by a bacteria that every bird has in its gut, but every now and then the bacteris gets out of hand and you end up with trouble.

The symptom is that you see a bloody poo, but everyone looks fine. The next day one is dead. You notice another bloody poo, still no one seems 'off' the next morning you have another dead. And so on.

I haven't the knowledge to explain this further, but I encourage everyone to look this up and get an idea of what to watch for and what some of the trigger causes might be. It is primarily an illness of young birds and can wipe out large numbers very quickly. Give it a Google. Necrotic Enteritis.

Glad you brought it up Uno, I was talking on another coccis thread about this. When we had the vet talk in Red Deer on ILT I asked about this and she said that cocci generally starts in chicks over 6 weeks old when you are switching them off the medicated feed. MOST times when a chick or chicks get bloody poo and you start loosing them under 6 weeks old and on medicated feed it is this Enteritis that is the culprit.
To treat it you need to use antibiotics, and the sulfa drugs used to treat Cocci can upset the balance more and cause more problems. So the best thing she said was if they are under 6 weeks, on medicated feed, treat with penicillin antibiotics first (like Polytonne A superbooster), if there is no improvement then switch to the amprol or sulfa meds.

Thanks for bringing to attention Uno and sharing how to treat Hidden. I know I tend to assume cocci at the first sight of blood in poo, but that is not always the case.

I am trying to get some information, but I believe there is potentially a new strain of coccidia that doesn't respond well to Amprol (medicated chick feed).

When and if I find anything, will post.

And yes, coccidia usually has all the other signs of droopy, fluffed, huddled and lethargic birds. Adult birds rarely get coccidia overload to the point of dying. At least that is my understanding.