How to tell if chicken is sick of any kind

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Hello and welcome to BYC! Chickens with ailments are often slow and lethargic and may loose weight quickly and produce irregular droppings. They also just generally look distressed or not normal. You may want to check other places in this forum and perhaps start a thread somewhere else. We are always happy to help. :)
 
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There is a great chapter In Chicken Health for Dummies book on performing an examination on chickens for health assessment.

Also, here's a link that describes what to look for: http://www.bhwt.org.uk/cms/hen-examination-guidelines/

Good luck on selecting your breeders.
 
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Welcome to BYC!!! The members here are great and so are their chickens;)!!! This is the BEST CHICKEN KEEPING FORUM ON EARTH!!!!

Hope you have fun and if you need anything we are here to help!!

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Welcome to BYC!
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We're glad to have you.

These are some common signs of a sick chicken:

  • Loose, runny, or off-colored (greenish, yellowish, etc) droppings
  • Lethargy. Birds may just sit around listlessly and get picked on by other birds.
  • Ruffled feathers. Most sick birds will puff themselves up and look miserable.
  • Lack of appetite
  • Inability to walk or trouble standing
  • Mishapen pupils to the eye
  • Hard, small crop, or large squishy crop with a foul odor coming from the beak
  • Scabs and lesions on the comb and wattles or a cheesy substance in the throat
  • Gasping, wheezing, sneezing, coughing, gurgling
  • Sudden drop in egg laying
  • Mishapen eggs with wrinkly shells (not always a sign of sickness, though)
  • Protruding breastbone and weight loss

These are just some of the symptoms that sick birds can show. Specific diseases have their own set of symptoms.
 
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