Chicken Head Cold Remedy for Chicken with Croaking Noises

Two days ago our sweet Barred Rock hen May had a bad head cold.  Her beak was crusty, and she was making strange croaking noises.  I think she picked up a cold from a wild game bird who was carrying something that May hadn't previously been exposed to.

Moira with our Barred Rock May with the late Arucana Teri (RIP)

I found this youtube video of a sick croaking chicken.  May sounded exactly like this:



She also wasn't eating and just wanted to stand or sit still.  She felt very hot and feverish to the touch.

I checked in Juliette de Bairacli Levy's book The Complete Herbal Handbook for Farm and Stable for a natural remedy for May.  This is the second time I have used her book for a chicken health issue.

I used 2 recipes from her book.  The first was a beak wash.  I used 2 teaspoons of water, 2 drops of Eucalyptus globulus essential oil, and a pinch of fine sea salt.  We cleaned her beak outside with q-tips, and then inside with fresh q-tips.  (The type of Eucalyptus oil was not specified, so probably other species of Eucalyptus would be just fine also, for example Eucalyptus smithii).

photo by Marja Flick-Buijs

The second recipe was for a garlic vinegar paste.  This was made up easily with 2 teaspoons of ground fresh garlic with 1 teaspoon of vinegar.  I used Juliette's recommended dosage which was 1/2 teaspoon, 2 times per day. We checked on May the morning after 1 day of this treatment.  She was more active, her croaking sounds were not as loud, she still felt warm, but not terribly hot or feverish.  We fed her one more dose of garlic and washed the outside of her beak, but she was strong enough that she would not allow us to wash the inside of her beak.  So she only received the one dose on the second day.  Today is day 3 and we are very happy that  she is back to her normal self.