A couple of weeks ago, my silkie chicks start sneezing. I started to get worried when the sneezing become severe and they were keeping their beaks open, sign that they could not breath normally. I concluded that they are ill and start asking questions how to treat them. All the answers I got were to give them antibiotics.
I don’t agree with antibiotics on humans, except the most sever cases, so why should I agree with them on my chicks? I start searching the internet and found a natural remedy, but unfortunately it is available only in the USA.
So I decided to recreate it in my kitchen combining the majority of the ingredients listed on the package.
I also made the some echinacea tea to help their immune system and offered it instead of water.
Meanwhile I kept looking for the causes of their sneeze, because it was just sneeze, no other symptoms, just continuous and annoying sneeze.
Finally I found the cause – hay bedding. Two weeks ago, before moving them out to the balcony, I changed their bedding from pine shavings to hay. It seems that on some chicks, in my case silkies, hay bedding can cause severe respiratory problems. So I changed back to pine shavings, kept giving them echinacea tea for few days and use the mixture of oils direct onto their nose, under wings and into their tea/water. Not long after started this treatment my chicks are back to normal, no sneezing at all 🙂
The original product is good for all kind of problems on birds, and I assume that my mixture will also have some of the original product benefits. If you are interested you can find more info about the original product online.
If you want to try my recipe:
50 ml of sunflower oil (at that moment I did not had corn oil at hand)
20 drops of each essential oil (make sure is for internal use) – oregano, rosemary and eucalyptus (I replaced the camphor oil with eucalyptus as in our country we don’t have internal use essential camphor oil)
I keep it at room temperature and every day I put 2 ml of mixture into 500 ml of warm echinacea tea, than after 3 days I replaced the tea with tap water but continued to add the 2 ml mixture for another couple of days until all the sneezing disappeared. I also rubbed the mixture using a cotton swab onto their nose 3 times a day on the first 3 days and in the evening I put few drops under their wings.
Essential oils – good for humans, good for chicks too 🙂
Greenzonelife 