any ideas/ suggestions for lame hen?

[chicknmania]

We have a banty Silver Spangled Sussex hen who is older, around 5 or 6 y.o. She had scaly leg mites last summer and was limping as a result. We treated and eliminated the scaly leg mites, but she is still lame. Late last fall we noticed that she had bruising and tenderness about halfway up her sore leg. We had been treating the leg with soaks in epsom salts and, of course, the petroleum jelly for the leg mites. We took her to the vet who decided that the leg was not broken and that an xray would not show much, if anything, so no point in doing it. She suggested cosequin (sp) on the chance that it might be arthritis, but I have not been able to find any. I don't notice the bruising and tenderness anymore, and we have noticed that her limp is less, but I don't feel comfortable letting her run with the flock b/c I'm afraid a rooster might re-injure the leg unless it is completely healed, if he tried to jump on her his weight might be too much, or she might decide to roost too high. She is healthy in every other way and obviously misses her friends and it makes me sad not being able to let her out with the flock. Can anyone suggest anything nutritionally or otherwise that might help her? I really don't think it's arthritis, b/c of the visible bruising we saw.

 

[5Leepy!]

I have no experience with this in chickens but my guess based on humans would be that she has had some sort of sprain. It's possible that she sprained it at some point and if she's jumping up and down to/from a roost it can't heal properly. If that's a possibility I would just isolate her to sleep. You could even isolate her in a dog crate that remains in the coop so she's not away from the flock.

Hope that helps or you find the cause.

5Leepy!

edit: oops, just re-read your post and saw the mention of the rooster... maybe isolate her with another hen or two in a way that they can all still see their flock?

 

[chicknmania]

Thank you, we did that for months, kept her from roosting on a perch. Just let her start roosting on a low perch in the past couple of days; she has a straw and mulch layer to land on and I wanted to see if she got worse if she started using a perch, which she has not, she actually seems to be just a bit better.