Realise I didn’t post an update on this previously.

Had a post-mortem done on the cockerel and it came back as most likely cause of death from coccidiosis. There was a very heavy secondary bacterial gut infection of various bugs too.  I was a little surprised as there was no evidence of diarrhoea unlike my hen that died earlier in the year. I did ask about cross infection from wild birds, pheasants, peacocks, pigeons etc but they said coccidiosis was rather host specific and they didn’t it likely to have come from them. They also said avian TB was rather rare and I think they excluded this at the PM. I have to say his symptoms did fit with the TB symptoms though.

I did have a thought that earlier in the year my euphorbias were very heavily pecked by some birds (?which) and the sap is quite caustic. I do wonder therefore if this might have caused damage to the gut with the thickening/scarring that was observed at PM. That might then present the opportunity for various bugs to take over including the coccidia. Anyhow, I have treated the remaining flock with baycox although decided not to treat them with baytril.

I would be interested to hear any comments on the above.

Cheers,

Matt