I usually only keep single flocks (this is my second batch of 6) at a time as they are mostly pets and not used for much else, so the remaining two out of 6 have been together since I got them as chicks and no others have been introduced. Not much in diet has changed, I feed them DuMor layer crumble and some eggshells for calcium every now and then, but not as much recently as egg production has gone way down with only two chickens left.
She's eating and drinking when offered directly to her on her own. Her poop is back normal looking and she laid an egg for us today, but she still will not stand. I have her settled and isolated from my other hen.
I'm just not sure what to do, and I'm very sorry and I'm trying my best to answer all these questions to help us figure out something, but it's my first time one of my chickens has had a serious illness/problem.
Hey, you're doing fine! Slow down and don't get frustrated. I know we're asking a lot of questions but they really are important for us to get the whole picture. You'd do better with an oyster shell rather than the egg shell. With the egg shell, unless you are really crushing it small, you may be setting yourself up with an egg eater later.
Honestly, I've had both my flocks on Dumor and have not had any problems with it thus far, and it is the more expensive brand compared to some TSC sells. We don't have any local feed stores that's not going miles out of my way, so I'm trying to get the best I can but I'll look into what I can get.
I wormed and dusted both my hens yesterday and also put in the Sav-a-chick probiotic in the sick one's water. Her weight hasn't noticeably changed and she's still looking bulkier than my other chicken (no breast bone protruding), as she always has. She's eating and drinking normally and completely on her own and I'm getting an egg every day still. Poop is normal.
The only problem I'm still seeing is the fact that she won't stand.
The other four were lost to an animal attack, so I'm not thinking Marek's has run through my flock at an earlier time.
As to the Dumor. Purina makes this for
TSC and here in the NE, it used to come out of the Penn. plant. Now it is coming out of NY. It is full of clumps of mouldy feed and the birds are not thriving with it at all. I have no clue where you are from but you need to do some research on where your feed is being processed. There are so many recalls of this feed through the years, it really is suspect. If it is all you can get then you need to be heads up with checking it and also providing more nutrition with the added vitamins and probiotics in their water.
Now, you have not said whether this hen could have been injured in the animal attack. Is this a possibility? When did this happen and what was the nature of the attack? Sometimes, if a chicken has been attacked, seen an attack of her flock mates, she or he will give up, and just not thrive. Maybe it's the chicken's way of grieving, who knows. I know of it happening in a friend's flock. His flock was attacked by a fox and it took 1/4 of the meat birds he was raising. The others remaining, were the size of a basket ball when the 8 weeks was up and this one was the size of a softball. You can put whatever kind of a spin you want on it, these are the facts. Could this be what is going on with yours? I'm not there so I really have no clue.
As Seminole said, an antibiotic wouldn't be a bad thing right now. You could use Duramycin-10, Tylan 50, whatever you can get, as the symptoms are not really specific. Me, I would go for the Duramycin-10, readily available from
TSC and probably the least 'offensive' of the antibiotics out there. This is what I always use first. Almost always whatever it is going on will respond and I can save the "big guns" like the Tylan for something that is specific in symptoms for that drug.
Your hen could have been having troubles with being egg bound or be suffering from one of the respiratory diseases that poultry can get. Keep up with the vitamins, see if you can find a different feed that you can afford and treat with the antibiotics for 7 - 14 days, if using the Duramycin. Tylan has different treatment timelines. I would also worm her with Safeguard incase it is an internal worm problem. Do the simple things first...worming, vitamins and probiotics and then finally the antibiotics.
