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- #61
Thank you for the advice!! I will just continue monitoring her now for the moment. I guess I'm just worried that maybe she has something wrong with her that is not allowing her to absorb vitamin A properly, if that's even a thing!Glad to hear she's doing well. She appears to be in great health and enjoying life. She's quite beautiful.
As long as she's behaving normally and eating and pooping okay, I caution against being overly concerned about tiny little things. I know a few chicken keepers that have been obsessed with solving every tiny odd thing with supplements, and one eventually ended up poisoning and killing the chicken with a toxic herb by following advice off Facebook. The other one likely contributed to the demise of the hen because it was being fed too many supplements that eventually overloaded the chicken's liver and kidneys.
Hi sorry, I should have been more clear, she has had growths in her neck for a year or so which the vets were unable to diagnose, and I thought they were causing the saliva. I looked at her preen gland yesterday and it looked lumpy so I searched online, and apparently both a lumpy preen gland and saliva can be due to vitamin A deficiency.She should be really getting all the vitamins/minerals she needs if she's eating a nutritionally balanced feed.
Extra Vitamins can be part of initial supportive care to get a hen through an acute crisis, but they are not meant for long term continued use.
I agree with @azygous if she's acting relatively normal, then I would just monitor and let her continue to chicken.
Your comment about the preen gland is curious, the gland is like a little lump and it's not on the neck, it's at the tail. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding.
Here are some pics of it just in case. It's a little dirty because she just had a dust bath: