Chicken moving in slow motion

[K0k0shka]

One of my hens has been acting strange for the past month or two. She's 2 years old and otherwise healthy, but lately she's been looking and acting a little off. She has a great appetite, shows interest in regular chicken life, comes into my lap to hang out. Her comb is very pale, but most of them have pale combs right now because of molting so I didn't think much of that. The strangest thing has been how she moves - she moves in a slow and fluid manner, like a mammal instead of like a bird. You know how birds move their heads in jerky increments, instead of in single fluid movements? And mammals move more smoothly? It looks odd on a bird. None of the other chickens move like that. She's walking slowly, too. Not limping, just everything about her movements is like she's in slow motion. Her crop empties overnight and is full at bedtime, and her appetite is great, so eating is going well. She's not currently laying, but then again none of the rest of them are either because they've started their winter break already. She has a defective tail (that's how she's always been) which is immobile and perpetually points down, so that makes it harder to judge her posture. It also makes her butt chronically messy and in need of regular baths and trims, which she accepts peacefully. She needs a bath/trim right now, but I can't tell if it's because of her tail or because of something wrong with her poop. Looks normally messy from regular poop.

So after a month or two of her plateauing like this, today I noticed a change - she was losing her balance when walking Not enough to fall over, but enough to sway and catch herself when making turns. No other changes today, but the balance issue is new and is worrying me. It's very hard for me to get a hold of a chicken vet around here, so while I wait, I wanted to ask the almighty BYC. What do you guys think? Is there anything you know of that presents like this?

 

[K0k0shka]

UPDATE: My poor hen's health declined sharply and I had to euthanize her Shortly after she started losing her balance, I noticed another new development - labored breathing. I finally managed to get an appointment with a vet and brought her in. The vet discovered respiratory distress, did an x-ray that revealed her insides weren't looking right. A big mass of unknown character was pushing on all of her organs, making it difficult for her to breathe and eat. She'd gone from 7+ to 5 pounds in a couple of months. Vet said that nothing could be done, so I took the hen home thinking we'd do a photoshoot with the kids and her (she was my daughter's favorite) and then I'd put her down, since she was suffering terminally at this point. The poor thing crashed that day and barely made it through the photoshoot, I had to send my husband in the house to feed the kids dinner while I dropped everything and took care of the hen right there, she was that bad (unable to stand, flapping and crying out in distress). It was quite traumatic to watch.

I put her down and decided to do the necropsy myself. I have another sick chicken with a poor prognosis (with a different problem altogether) who's on her third medication, and between the two of them the cost has gotten too high for me to add necropsy on top of everything. I've processed a lot of chickens, and while I'm not a vet, I figured I can at least see obvious things and get some answers, definitely better than nothing.

And boy oh boy, everything about this chicken's body was messed up! I don't even know how she was still alive! She was septic and had a raging bacterial infection all over everything - thick snotty biofilm enveloping every organ, between the skin and the muscle, inside her joints!!! Her liver was enlarged and discolored, her gall bladder was the size of my whole thumb (normally it's like a pea size), her heart was soft and mushy as opposed to the strong tough muscle it normally is, white lumps covered her gas-filled intestines, and in place of eggs she had walnut-sized sacks filled with a blood-like fluid - some congealed like cranberry sauce, some still liquid.

I described this to the vet when I brought in my other chicken, and the vet said it sounded like lymphoid leukosis, caused by an avian virus. So at least it's not something I did, and there's nothing I could've done... Her moving in "slow motion" and losing her balance was probably just her being too weak, from having lost so much weight. When I asked why this one chicken and not any of the others, when they live together and would've been exposed to the same environmental conditions (including viruses), she said that some chickens' immune systems are just weaker, and some could be genetic factors - predispositions that make it less likely for them to survive something external like this. So it's still possible that her poor breeding had something to do with this.

Oh, another thing I found that's unrelated to any of this, except maybe to the poor breeding part, but gave me more closure - she had no tail. Like absolutely nothing, her spine just abruptly ended within the pelvis, just like on a rumpless Araucana. She was an Orpington, so that was weird, and I had been wondering what exactly was wrong with her tail and why she couldn't move it.... Turns out, she didn't have one at all!

RIP my sweet girl.

 

[Tookie]

Yeah, I have selenium and vitamin E left over from treating wry neck. Might as well use them before they expire.

Sounds good! Let me know how it goes.

 

[K0k0shka]

Sounds good! Let me know how it goes.

I will! Thanks for the input. The pullet I treated for wry neck recovered completely and is a healthy and bossy 3-year-old hen now. Hopefully I can save this one, too!

 

[Tookie]

UPDATE: My poor hen's health declined sharply and I had to euthanize her Shortly after she started losing her balance, I noticed another new development - labored breathing. I finally managed to get an appointment with a vet and brought her in. The vet discovered respiratory distress, did an x-ray that revealed her insides weren't looking right. A big mass of unknown character was pushing on all of her organs, making it difficult for her to breathe and eat. She'd gone from 7+ to 5 pounds in a couple of months. Vet said that nothing could be done, so I took the hen home thinking we'd do a photoshoot with the kids and her (she was my daughter's favorite) and then I'd put her down, since she was suffering terminally at this point. The poor thing crashed that day and barely made it through the photoshoot, I had to send my husband in the house to feed the kids dinner while I dropped everything and took care of the hen right there, she was that bad (unable to stand, flapping and crying out in distress). It was quite traumatic to watch.

I put her down and decided to do the necropsy myself. I have another sick chicken with a poor prognosis (with a different problem altogether) who's on her third medication, and between the two of them the cost has gotten too high for me to add necropsy on top of everything. I've processed a lot of chickens, and while I'm not a vet, I figured I can at least see obvious things and get some answers, definitely better than nothing.

And boy oh boy, everything about this chicken's body was messed up! I don't even know how she was still alive! She was septic and had a raging bacterial infection all over everything - thick snotty biofilm enveloping every organ, between the skin and the muscle, inside her joints!!! Her liver was enlarged and discolored, her gall bladder was the size of my whole thumb (normally it's like a pea size), her heart was soft and mushy as opposed to the strong tough muscle it normally is, white lumps covered her gas-filled intestines, and in place of eggs she had walnut-sized sacks filled with a blood-like fluid - some congealed like cranberry sauce, some still liquid.

I described this to the vet when I brought in my other chicken, and the vet said it sounded like lymphoid leukosis, caused by an avian virus. So at least it's not something I did, and there's nothing I could've done... Her moving in "slow motion" and losing her balance was probably just her being too weak, from having lost so much weight. When I asked why this one chicken and not any of the others, when they live together and would've been exposed to the same environmental conditions (including viruses), she said that some chickens' immune systems are just weaker, and some could be genetic factors - predispositions that make it less likely for them to survive something external like this. So it's still possible that her poor breeding had something to do with this.

Oh, another thing I found that's unrelated to any of this, except maybe to the poor breeding part, but gave me more closure - she had no tail. Like absolutely nothing, her spine just abruptly ended within the pelvis, just like on a rumpless Araucana. She was an Orpington, so that was weird, and I had been wondering what exactly was wrong with her tail and why she couldn't move it.... Turns out, she didn't have one at all!

RIP my sweet girl.
View attachment 3675204

Oh no, I'm so sorry to hear this. You did everything you could, and you know she's not suffering anymore.
I hope the rest of your flock stays healthy, and they don't have lymphoid leukosis.

 

[Auntiejessi3]

I'm so sorry! I hope someone chimes in with some ideas. She's one of the partridge orps you got from Papa's Poultry, right?

 

[Tookie]

Could be a vitamin deficiency, or something neurological.
I would go ahead and give her 1/2 of a B Complex tablet and Vitamin E 400IU daily for a couple weeks and see how she is then. Also give her eggs to help her more easily absorb the Vitamin E.

 

[K0k0shka]

I'm so sorry! I hope someone chimes in with some ideas. She's one of the partridge orps you got from Papa's Poultry, right?

Thanks! And yes she is! I've had SO many issues with his partridge orps. Three died before their first birthday, one was chronically ill his whole life and had to be euthanized at just over a year old, this one has a disabled tail and now this problem, and the last one is more or less healthy, but has a permanently puffed-looking face that's worrying me (the top edge of skin over her eyes is so enlarged that it partially obscures her vision...) Also she's the wrong color for a partridge orp, too - should be orange with black lacing, and she's black with orange lacing. None of his partridge orps have really looked the way they should for the breed, but even if we discount the looks (which I don't care so much about), they've had a ridiculously low hatch rate and all have had some kind of health problem or another... I've ordered hatching eggs from this breed from Papa's twice and really wanted them to work, because they are SO pretty and sweet, but I've been very discouraged.

 

[K0k0shka]

Is her crop squashy?? Could be sour crop making her not feel so good.

Her crop feels normal. It's full at bedtime and empties overnight.

 

[K0k0shka]

Could be a vitamin deficiency, or something neurological.
I would go ahead and give her 1/2 of a B Complex tablet and Vitamin E 400IU daily for a couple weeks and see how she is then. Also give her eggs to help her more easily absorb the Vitamin E.

Good point. I have all that from having treated wry neck before, so I'll give her a treatment of that. Probably selenium too, right, to help with the vitamin E absorption?