- Apr 28, 2014
- 239
- 5
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I have a 12 wk old barred rock pullet that has been acting strange for about a week or two. First off, she is pretty small for her age (i have experienced this same thing before where one of my pullet's was small and I would find her in the yard sleeping a lot). I would really like to know what causes a pullet to be a lot smaller than the others and not have as much energy. Secondly, she just acts different from the other birds. There are 17 total including her in a pen together all about the same age and size, they always have plenty of food and water. We put wheat straw down in the pen and coop to cover up poop to control smell and flies. When I let them out to free range supervised, the other birds go nuts and take off together and eat grass, she walks slowly by herself and doesn't seem to eat as much. Today when I let them out she was asleep on her side so I picked her up and brought her out to see if she would eat and she kind of just stood there for a minute hunched up and then ate a piece of grass after a minute and then would close her eyes and fall asleep (the first picture I took as soon as I took her out of pen). Then, since she was asleep, I brought her back in pen and put her by the food to see if she would eat that. She took a few bites and then fell asleep again by the feed bowl (second picture). I did see her have runny poop but it wasn't strange in color. I also noticed her tail feathers were kind of drooped down instead of perked up. We decided to separate her and start her on tetracycline antibiotics to be on the safe side. Any suggestions on what could be wrong with her?? 
