- Jan 15, 2009
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Please HELP! My very favorite chicken, Oprah, is not at all right this morning. Oprah is an Easter Egger, hatched on October 21. I have seven chickens in all, mixed breeds, and they currently live in a big freezer box in our mudroom (we are having the worst winter in ages (Massachusetts) and since I got them so late, there never did seem a reasonable time to transition them to the outdoors...
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Oprah seemed fine last night. Around 11:00 - I had her and Big Bird, a Buff Orpington, snoozing on my lap, which they love, while I was listening to a book. She seemed totally normal.
This morning when I went to feed them, I noticed she was really hanging back - normally she is the feistiest, pushiest of all the birds. She seemed to be avoiding her mates, looked at the food, pecked a time or two, and then went back to hunker down in one of the sleeping boxes they have in there. After I did horse, cow, and dog chores, I came back in and she still seemed all hunkered down. I called her, she perked up and as she came over to me from the back of the pen I again noticed her avoiding the other chickens and looking at them sort of cockeyed. I put her on my lap and she nestled down right away and I noticed that most of the time she had her left eye closed and the right one open. There does not appear to be a discharge or swelling or anything that I could SEE wrong with the eye other than that she is keeping it closed most of the time and really looking oddly at things.
She is lethargic and not particularly interested in anything and doesn't seem to have pooped since I removed her from the flock about an hour ago. She was sitting on my lap for awhile and seemed reluctant to be removed but I do have to get some work done today. So now she's in a dog crate next to the other hens pen so she can see and hear her friends but has her own space. She is mostly just hunkering down in a box full of shavings.
I have both Sulmet and Terramycin at hand - should I use? Hate to use antibiotics when not necessary as they often weaken the system in other ways.
Also, I should mention, though this may be totally irrelevant... Oprah has never had particularly good vision. While all the other hens can peck grains of whatever very precisely off of my hand. Oprah has never been able to - she has always sort of looked at stuff on my hand a little cockeyed and then pecked ferociously toward the thing but always misses and gets a big peck of hand instead (OUCH) so I never hand feed her..... The same thing happens if there are just a few grains of something on the floor, she pecks at it but always misses. Nonetheless, she seems to get plenty of food when it is all in a big dish in front of her and wherever she pecks she'll come up with a something. As previously noted, she is generally the first to the food dish and makes a big claim on space until she's done.
Please help! I really really love this chicken
Oprah seemed fine last night. Around 11:00 - I had her and Big Bird, a Buff Orpington, snoozing on my lap, which they love, while I was listening to a book. She seemed totally normal.
This morning when I went to feed them, I noticed she was really hanging back - normally she is the feistiest, pushiest of all the birds. She seemed to be avoiding her mates, looked at the food, pecked a time or two, and then went back to hunker down in one of the sleeping boxes they have in there. After I did horse, cow, and dog chores, I came back in and she still seemed all hunkered down. I called her, she perked up and as she came over to me from the back of the pen I again noticed her avoiding the other chickens and looking at them sort of cockeyed. I put her on my lap and she nestled down right away and I noticed that most of the time she had her left eye closed and the right one open. There does not appear to be a discharge or swelling or anything that I could SEE wrong with the eye other than that she is keeping it closed most of the time and really looking oddly at things.
She is lethargic and not particularly interested in anything and doesn't seem to have pooped since I removed her from the flock about an hour ago. She was sitting on my lap for awhile and seemed reluctant to be removed but I do have to get some work done today. So now she's in a dog crate next to the other hens pen so she can see and hear her friends but has her own space. She is mostly just hunkering down in a box full of shavings.
I have both Sulmet and Terramycin at hand - should I use? Hate to use antibiotics when not necessary as they often weaken the system in other ways.
Also, I should mention, though this may be totally irrelevant... Oprah has never had particularly good vision. While all the other hens can peck grains of whatever very precisely off of my hand. Oprah has never been able to - she has always sort of looked at stuff on my hand a little cockeyed and then pecked ferociously toward the thing but always misses and gets a big peck of hand instead (OUCH) so I never hand feed her..... The same thing happens if there are just a few grains of something on the floor, she pecks at it but always misses. Nonetheless, she seems to get plenty of food when it is all in a big dish in front of her and wherever she pecks she'll come up with a something. As previously noted, she is generally the first to the food dish and makes a big claim on space until she's done.
Please help! I really really love this chicken
