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Please don't allow guilt to compound the grief you are dealing with. It was a crazy combo of conditions and circumstances that killed little Murphy, not you. We can all show you a long list of much loved chickens that have died in spite of our efforts to save them. The only consolation is that...

I don't think there is much left to bury after the lab guys get through dismantling the corpse. I did a necropsy with a nurse friend last month, and it didn't look much like a chicken any longer after we were finished. But if you ask them to be careful, I bet they'd oblige. All her innards...

The green stuff is bile. It just indicates she hasn't been eating food. As she gains strength, so will her appetite, and you should start seeing normal poop after she's eating normally again. Egg is one of the best things to feed any sick chicken for their first food coming off a serious...

It's not real common for the gizzard to be impacted. It's more common for the impaction to happen in the crop. The gizzard can get impacted from eating too much grit or oyster shell, and usually it's because the chicken didn't have access to adequate food. The most likely reason for Murphy not...

If she has an impaction, it's in her crop, not the gizzard. You need to get more than a eye dropper of oil into her, about a teaspoon or even two. Then massage the crop very gently. If the crop fails to empty, you can try a stool softener such as Dulcolax. Massage is key to getting the impaction...

As long as you need to go buy vitamins, look for Poultry Nutri-drench. If you can't find the one for poultry, there's one for goats that's identical. Nutri-drench has a special formula where the nutrients are literally mainlined into the system, by-passing the digestive system and liver. It...

Good that you don't have a compost pile. Botulism is wicked and really tough to treat. Don't worry about getting food down her right now. She will get her appetite back as soon as the antibiotic kicks in. Just dip her beak in water frequently to remind her to drink. Vitamins will help her a...

It could also be Clostridium botulinum. Has your hen been in any compost this week? She may have scratched down into an anaerobic layer of soil and encountered some botulism toxin infected insects.

Go ahead a treat her as you've treated other chickens. I suspect Clostridium perfrigens, a fairly common infection but deadly, and it can kill quickly. When a chicken of mine has the symptoms you describe, I don't even stop to try to figure out the possibilities. I just go right ahead and throw...

Give her the Tylan. Do you know the proper dosage for a chicken?

Also, if you have any baby vitamins or poultry vitamins, give those to her to boost her immune system so the antibiotic can help her. Is her poop white and runny?

Do you have any antibiotics on hand? Penicillin, amoxicillin? I would start her on it immediately. 250mg is the dose for a chicken, once a day, or divide the dose in half and give twice a day for the next 10 days.

It's important to know if this came on very suddenly or if this hen has been acting sick for many days and getting progressively worse. If it happened suddenly, I would suspect she got into something toxic. That could include soil contaminated by leaky machinery or the disposal of paint thinner...