I have a reasonably young Welsummer hen, she is about 16 months old. She has laid me an egg like clockwork every day for the past several months.... (Lucky me!)
The past few days though no eggs
And now tonight I go out to feed and she isn't her normal self. Her clucking seems so low in volume. She's also lathargic. She still scratches and walks about but she doesn't seem to be eating.
I did a test and brought out some live meal worms and bread. Nothing happened. The geese and her coop mates, her daughter and Roo, both hatched 7/24/2011 and very healthy in appearance, went crazy, gobbling everything up I was willing to drop.
Mama however would come over and look and not eat. Now I am worried. I've put her in a dog crate on the back porch so I can make sure she's pooping and what it looks like, and also to see if she is laying and the "kids" are eating the eggs before I collect them, etc.
Overall visually she looks beautiful. Her eyes are bright, her backside is clean, feathers looks shiny and full, nostrils look clean. No sores, lameness, and I felt her backside for possible egg impactions and found nothing.
2 days ago it was about 40* F and the big dummies were happily running in the rain and cold instead of in their houses.
Could this be due to the cold?
Should they be wormed? (I've never wormed them).
I am going to the feed store tomorrow and am going to get some wormer. Not sure what else to do. Any thoughts?
Sorry for the rambling!!
