6 1/2 month old lethargic hen - suggestions??

There are so many diseases chickens can come down with, trying to decide which one is affecting your hen would be a futile exercise. None of us can look at a sick hen and diagnose her without a lot of investigating where she's been hanging out and what she's been eating or has been exposed to.

A vet can run a lot of tests that will also cost a lot, but there is one test that can go a long way toward helping to figure out what may be wrong with your hen. It's a fecal float test. By taking a sample of this hen's poop to a vet and asking for this test may help determine if your hen has an overload of coccidia or an infestation of intestinal worms, both of which can cause the symptoms you are seeing.

If this turns out to be impossible, I recommend you give your hen a round of Corid in case she's suffering from coccidiosis. It just takes five days and it may cause her to improve. You may try a wormer such as Safeguard following the Corid if she hasn't shown improvement, and finally, try an oral antibiotic such as amoxicillin if the treatments for parasites fails. The Corid and Safeguard can be found at most feed stores. Amoxicillin can be found online where they sell meds for aquarium fish.

 

Not my intention to hijack thread but I keep meaning to ask this when I see people discussing time length between picking up Coccidiosis and dying. It might help here so if anyone knows for sure what it starts out like, I would like to know too..

I have had two bouts of Coccidiosis... mine show signs and within 2 hrs dead, one by one. Started with bloody diarhea.

Did I mistake the illness?

Also... how much Corid dose do you give azygous per gallon? I do not give this because I once had a water hog hen and she died from overdose of Corid I believe. I just worry about that happening again.

 

Corid is very simply a thiamine blocker that interferes with the carbohydrate synthesis the coccidia parsites require for their life cycle inside a chicken. For this reason, you want to withhold vitamins during treatment. No side effects, no special precautions necessary other than that. All the flock should be treated because if one has coccidia, they all do.

It will say it's for cattle, but it works for all animals even though the coccidia species differ according to each class of animals. Chickens have up to nine different species of coccidia that can takes up residence and cause sickness and death.

 

Coccidiosis has an eight day incubation period during which there may be no symptoms, and some chickens present with symptoms very quickly and others much more slowly, only showing signs of extreme illness right before they die.

It does no harm to treat with Corid the minute you see a chicken acting a bit "off". Once you notice a chicken having bloody stools, the parasites are well on their way to destroying the intestinal lining and you may give the chicken Corid "drench" which is about a quarter ml of undiluted Corid liquid.

Using Corid liquid to treat coccidiosis you add two teaspoons Corid to one gallon water, mixing fresh each day for five days. Wait one week, and do another five days of treatment. You may give the drench right along with the Corid in the drinking water.

Using powdered Corid, the ratio is one and a half teaspoons in a gallon of water.

 

Thank you, I appreciate you! I had a batch in 2016, Lavendar Wyondottes, that showed zero signs and one by one, they fell left and right fast. I did not get a necropsy done.

 

It's wonderful news she's improving! The blood in the poop points to coccidiosis, so be sure you do the treatment for the full five days. Wait a week for any eggs to hatch, and then do another five days to get those coccidia before they begin their life cycle in the hen's intestines.