Tadqueer
In the Brooder
- May 13, 2022
- 4
- 5
- 14
Hi!
This is my first time posting so if I've done anything wrong, please let me know. Sorry about how long the post is, I just don't want to miss any details.
It's my first year with birds. 3/4 of the previous four to get injured/sick recovered completely so I know I'm doing something right but I've also had a pretty steep learning curve with it all. I only live with my girls part time, as I'm a 19 year old student; they live on my mum's property.
Isa was my year old Double Laced Golden Barnevelder, she was always skinner than my other chickens, and always had a few missing feather spots, just a bit scrappier than the rest. Six of them had come from the same breeder, and the other was my handreared girl Jessica, all around the same age (apart from the bantam we were gifted by the breeder who was getting too old to breed), they've all been together for six+ months roughly.
None of the other birds have the same symptoms as Isa.
All seven are hens, and we have four ducks (one is a drake).
We're fixing up a separate duck coop now, but for now the ducks share with the hens and, for the last three days, our eight ducklings (NOT my decision or idea).
It's a very large deep litter run, with an off shoot that functions as a coop. They only stay in at night; during the day they have our whole half acre (paddock, lawn, garden, goat shed, pond, plenty of worms and weeds) to explore. The bottom back of the offshoot coop is pretty groody and covered with duckling droppings right now due to the older ducks not letting the ducklings into the main run during the night (hence the new coop to separate them all), but thankfully the hens roost well above all that on a typical night.
Two of them went properly broody, we let them sit on a bunch of our fertilised duck eggs to see how it would go (really well, we have eight ducklings now). Those two are one of the bigger hens, and our bantam. This was fine for two weeks of the sitting, though the two would argue over the eggs, they had a balance worked out. Then Isa decided to get in on it.
She would come and sit between or next to the two, and they pecked her a LOT, though they also started pecking eachother again. We thought they would reach a balance again, but they didn't. A few days I realised Isa had a chest wound, so I isolated her in a hutch inside our house and soaked it with an antiseptic (had her sit on a towel with the antiseptic Betadine soaked in the middle of it, since she refused to have it on any other way).
I then had to go home, and my mum told me Isa was distressed being stuck inside all the time and that she seemed to have recovered, and that she'd been let back outside. I took her on her word.
Mistake. Didn't check Isa for a month or so, and then on my routine check realised her blood blister-type scab thingy was STILL THERE. It wasn't any worse, there'd been no further pecking to her belly as far as I'd been told and seen. The two other brooders had their feathers growing back, the ducklings were hatched, Isa hadn't been broody for over a month and a half, she didn't brood at all after getting isolated that first time, but she still had a mostly bald belly! The side belly feathers were there, but I think she never actually lost those. I researched a bunch to try to find something similiar but couldn't find anything.
I put antiseptic on it again, but as she'd been fine (comb was still red, some black spots on it but a lot of my girls have that and I spoke to a general-animal vet who didn't seem too worried (I'm too regional to get a specialised bird vet easily), still eating, being normal), besides the wound still healing, I let her back with the others (if my memory serves, I iso'd her for a day before that). I didn't want to mess with nature and it seemed to really hurt when I touched it, and the antiseptic didn't seem to be helpful. I had written a whole post here and then lost my draft in a stroke of bad luck, and realised I needed a photo to show what I meant anyway. I messaged my mum to take one but she never got around to it.
Unfortunately, the injury re-discovery happened at the same time as a different hen becoming eggbound and needing a lot of care (she has since been put down), the ducklings hatching, the hens raising the ducklings becoming VERY aggro to the other pets with their new babies around, and a lot of personal crises with school and work, so it kept slipping my mind.
I got some photos the moment I got back to the chickens this Sunday (attached here) but was putting off posting til I got home because I try to avoid using my laptop when I can, and it didn't seem urgent since she was eating and being a normal chook. Now I know I was a dumbass.
Today when I went to shoo them to bed (I had to leave early, so it was a few hours before their usual bedtime), Isa let me pick her up easily, and she was very floppy. This is weird because she NEVER lets people pick her up with being chased around first. This was the same as my eggbound girl Riley, and after checking Isa definitely couldn't stand, I ran a warm bath with epsom salts and placed her in it to soak for a little while. I wanted her muscles to relax and then I was planning to check her vent and potentially use the lube syringe the vet gave me spare on her.
Half an hour later, she SNAPPED her neck over the edge of the sink, which I've never seen happen before, and then started thrashing like they do when they want out of a bath, so I scooped her out to avoid her hurting herself, but she kept thrashing, and in thirty seconds as I got my mum to hand me a towel to wrap her up to stop her thrashing more, Isa had snapped her neck a different way despite my trying to stop her and supporting her head for her, and then she died. within the minute,
It was like a seisure!
She'd been eating and drinking normally all day - she had layer feed in the morning, and had access to the whole half acre all day. I don't know if she'd been laying, as they all tend to go to the same spots to lay.
The only thing different about her diet recently is the poultry vitamin liquid I got from the local stock feeder for their water, which everyone has so far loved.
I went back to the place I picked her up from, and there was a very normal poop there, and I've not seen any out of the ordinary.
I don't know if the wound and the seisure are connected, but I'm assuming they are for now.
I've got her on ice, and I'm going to take her to get a necropsy tomorrow if I can.
Any advice or familiarity with the situation is appreciated, and I'm never going to wait this long to deal with a scab on one of my girls again.
This is my first time posting so if I've done anything wrong, please let me know. Sorry about how long the post is, I just don't want to miss any details.
It's my first year with birds. 3/4 of the previous four to get injured/sick recovered completely so I know I'm doing something right but I've also had a pretty steep learning curve with it all. I only live with my girls part time, as I'm a 19 year old student; they live on my mum's property.
Isa was my year old Double Laced Golden Barnevelder, she was always skinner than my other chickens, and always had a few missing feather spots, just a bit scrappier than the rest. Six of them had come from the same breeder, and the other was my handreared girl Jessica, all around the same age (apart from the bantam we were gifted by the breeder who was getting too old to breed), they've all been together for six+ months roughly.
None of the other birds have the same symptoms as Isa.
All seven are hens, and we have four ducks (one is a drake).
We're fixing up a separate duck coop now, but for now the ducks share with the hens and, for the last three days, our eight ducklings (NOT my decision or idea).
It's a very large deep litter run, with an off shoot that functions as a coop. They only stay in at night; during the day they have our whole half acre (paddock, lawn, garden, goat shed, pond, plenty of worms and weeds) to explore. The bottom back of the offshoot coop is pretty groody and covered with duckling droppings right now due to the older ducks not letting the ducklings into the main run during the night (hence the new coop to separate them all), but thankfully the hens roost well above all that on a typical night.
Two of them went properly broody, we let them sit on a bunch of our fertilised duck eggs to see how it would go (really well, we have eight ducklings now). Those two are one of the bigger hens, and our bantam. This was fine for two weeks of the sitting, though the two would argue over the eggs, they had a balance worked out. Then Isa decided to get in on it.
She would come and sit between or next to the two, and they pecked her a LOT, though they also started pecking eachother again. We thought they would reach a balance again, but they didn't. A few days I realised Isa had a chest wound, so I isolated her in a hutch inside our house and soaked it with an antiseptic (had her sit on a towel with the antiseptic Betadine soaked in the middle of it, since she refused to have it on any other way).
I then had to go home, and my mum told me Isa was distressed being stuck inside all the time and that she seemed to have recovered, and that she'd been let back outside. I took her on her word.
Mistake. Didn't check Isa for a month or so, and then on my routine check realised her blood blister-type scab thingy was STILL THERE. It wasn't any worse, there'd been no further pecking to her belly as far as I'd been told and seen. The two other brooders had their feathers growing back, the ducklings were hatched, Isa hadn't been broody for over a month and a half, she didn't brood at all after getting isolated that first time, but she still had a mostly bald belly! The side belly feathers were there, but I think she never actually lost those. I researched a bunch to try to find something similiar but couldn't find anything.
I put antiseptic on it again, but as she'd been fine (comb was still red, some black spots on it but a lot of my girls have that and I spoke to a general-animal vet who didn't seem too worried (I'm too regional to get a specialised bird vet easily), still eating, being normal), besides the wound still healing, I let her back with the others (if my memory serves, I iso'd her for a day before that). I didn't want to mess with nature and it seemed to really hurt when I touched it, and the antiseptic didn't seem to be helpful. I had written a whole post here and then lost my draft in a stroke of bad luck, and realised I needed a photo to show what I meant anyway. I messaged my mum to take one but she never got around to it.
Unfortunately, the injury re-discovery happened at the same time as a different hen becoming eggbound and needing a lot of care (she has since been put down), the ducklings hatching, the hens raising the ducklings becoming VERY aggro to the other pets with their new babies around, and a lot of personal crises with school and work, so it kept slipping my mind.
I got some photos the moment I got back to the chickens this Sunday (attached here) but was putting off posting til I got home because I try to avoid using my laptop when I can, and it didn't seem urgent since she was eating and being a normal chook. Now I know I was a dumbass.
Today when I went to shoo them to bed (I had to leave early, so it was a few hours before their usual bedtime), Isa let me pick her up easily, and she was very floppy. This is weird because she NEVER lets people pick her up with being chased around first. This was the same as my eggbound girl Riley, and after checking Isa definitely couldn't stand, I ran a warm bath with epsom salts and placed her in it to soak for a little while. I wanted her muscles to relax and then I was planning to check her vent and potentially use the lube syringe the vet gave me spare on her.
Half an hour later, she SNAPPED her neck over the edge of the sink, which I've never seen happen before, and then started thrashing like they do when they want out of a bath, so I scooped her out to avoid her hurting herself, but she kept thrashing, and in thirty seconds as I got my mum to hand me a towel to wrap her up to stop her thrashing more, Isa had snapped her neck a different way despite my trying to stop her and supporting her head for her, and then she died. within the minute,
It was like a seisure!
She'd been eating and drinking normally all day - she had layer feed in the morning, and had access to the whole half acre all day. I don't know if she'd been laying, as they all tend to go to the same spots to lay.
The only thing different about her diet recently is the poultry vitamin liquid I got from the local stock feeder for their water, which everyone has so far loved.
I went back to the place I picked her up from, and there was a very normal poop there, and I've not seen any out of the ordinary.
I don't know if the wound and the seisure are connected, but I'm assuming they are for now.
I've got her on ice, and I'm going to take her to get a necropsy tomorrow if I can.
Any advice or familiarity with the situation is appreciated, and I'm never going to wait this long to deal with a scab on one of my girls again.
Hopefully someone has some wisdom to share.
