Aracana not eating and runny poo

[ChristineDown]

I have a black aracana 9 months old. She came to me as point of lay in October last year but didn't start laying until a few weeks ago which I put down to the cold winter we had. However, she isn't "thriving". She's fairly thin, and doesn't normally eat much. Her crop is always about 1/2 - 3/4 the size of my other chickens in the evening. The past few days she has had runny poo and eating very little. Tonight when I picked her up she seems quite light to me and her crop was empty. I tried to hand feed her some grain but she wasn't really interested. She only lays an egg every few days days but I haven't had one for 4 days now. She's drinking and walking around and being social. I only have 5 hens in my flock. I've been giving them yoghurt to try to help the runny poo but it's having no effect. I have complete pellets in a self feed hopper available all the time, and usually in the afternoon they get some scraps and/or mixed grain. The rest are all eating well and seem fine. What can I do for my aracana?
Thanks.

 

[Erica]

Hi ChristineDown,

that's a hard one because the symptoms are similar for many ailments — off feed, wasting, runny droppings. If it was my bird I would probably give her time out in a separate cage (but where she can still see the others, e.g. a cage within the pen), and make sure she's actually getting to the feed in case other birds are stopping her.

I would probably also give her a dose of a good broad spectrum worming solution, and some vitamin rich feed all to herself. Yoghurt, grated apple, oatmeal, mincemeat or cat food make good short term and convalescent diets apparently.

It seems to me there are an awful lot of illnesses that could produce the symptoms you describe. For instance I had a bird with exactly those symptoms, and after a long time of TLC I finally decided to put her down. During a post mortem (amateur that is) I found she had a feather (hooked into a V shape) stuck inside her proventriculus, which is the swelled section of digestive tract between the crop and the gizzard. It's not very likely that's your problem here; I just mention it to show some of the weird things that can produce similar symptoms in hens. But the most common possibility is probably worms...

I hope she just needs extra feeding and TLC... Good luck with this one.

 

[ChristineDown]

All my chickens were wormed at the end of last year. Do you think I need to repeat it again?