Congested hen

[carolthom]

We got some new hens three weeks ago, they are somewhere around 4-5 months old. When they got put in with my flock they got sick with something that looked like a cold. My flock had the same thing last year, so I treated the new hens with Tetracycline, like I did last year. It hasn't really cleared it up, but all but one of them are acting normal, just congested and sneezing. One of the hens went into to coop about a week and a half ago and hasn't bounced back yet. I noticed about a week ago that her face was turning white. I checked her over for mites and found some, like maybe 3-5 under each wing. I dusted her with wood ash and haven't seen any since. She is slowly regaining the color in her face, this morning it was light pink. She is still really congested and sneezing and weak, which is to be expected since she is anemic and hasn't been foraging for a while. I feed her an egg each morning and yogurt with chia seeds every evening. She is really thin, but all of them are fairly thin, since they weren't the healthiest when we got them.

Any ideas what I could do to clear her congestion up? I checked over all the rest of the chickens and found that no one else had any mites, that I could see. Not sure if I need to worm the new hens? Should I be doing anything different with the sickly hen?

 

[GitaBooks]

Feeding them eggs and yogurt is excellent. Make sure they get plenty of vitamins and fluids, don't get too stressed or too hot or too cold. Keep a dust bath available for all of them. I would suggest worming them, just to be on the safe side, since chickens kept in poor conditions can get bad worm infestations. If it is a virus, it may take a while for the hens to fight it off.

I hope they get better soon. Best of luck!