Chicken with a fever

Hi there,

I'm new to the world of chickens, we have 6 Rhode Island Reds that we got in April. So this is our first winter with them. We haven't had cold weather at all until this past week or so. I noticed one day that it looked like a few of the girls had some frostbite on their combs, so I've been putting Vaseline on them daily or every second day. I have no idea if that's related or not but it's the only thing that's changed recently. When I was applying the Vaseline this morning I noticed that one of the girls' comb was really hot to the touch. Compared to all the others, she felt feverish. I changed out their litter and she jumped in the box and started dust bathing and I noticed that she seemed to be trembling, as if she's cold and shivering, but it's really not all that cold today and I checked and none of the other birds were doing it. I also noticed that after I put the Vaseline on her comb she immediately started scratching at it and there's a dime sized bald patch on her head right beside her comb where she's scratching at the Vaseline. I checked her over as best I could though and didn't see any sign of injury or anything that looks infected.

Do chickens get fevers? Any thoughts on what this might be? I can't really separate her from the others, or she would certainly freeze without the body heat and deep litter of the coop.

Thanks for any advice!

Is she holding her wings away from her body? Panting? Chickens will do this when they are overheated. A lot of times when a hen is feeling unwell they will pull their head in close to their body and not move around much. The fact that she went happily along to a dust bath is good! The trembling could just be the dispersing of the dust bath through her feathers.

That being said, I'm no expert! Here is a thread where "chicken fever" was discussed and one of our very experienced members posted;

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/1050386/temperature-fever

Thank you!

You're welcome!

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