ckuehn
Songster
I came home yesterday and Jean was laying on her side in the coop by the nests. Her abdomen was swollen and distended and very hard. I took her in for first a soak and then decided to drain the fluid, since she was breathing so hard. I thought it might be putting pressure on her heart and lungs. I knew this was going to get her when she was 8 months old. She has always had reproductive issues: soft eggs, fairy eggs, no eggs for a year. She has been healthy except for a mite issue half of my chickens had in June. When I drained her, I got a lot of gold colored fluid and I tried to take the needle off to just let her drain (18) and it squirted out for a while and then dripped. There was a bit of blood in it and I got the abdomen sterilized and to the squishy point. Today she doesn't want to walk. She doesn't want to drink but ate some scrambled eggs and a few torpedo food bullets with antibiotics and some meloxicam. She is not really showing improvement and her abdomen feels heavy again. I am not exactly sure if it has filled up again or just never emptied enough. She is a brahma so she is a large framed chicken. I debated with giving her prednisone. I debated draining her again just 24 hours later. If I had some help yesterday, I might have done a better job. I am prolonging the inevitable, but I had a starlight green egger two years ago that lived over a year with a good quality of life with ascites. I want to make sure I am doing everything I can FOR HER, not just for me because I don't want to let her go. What would you do now?
