Great link ❤️ Great song

Of course now I have that song in my head haha
Leader of the pack! 31CCD4CD-6524-483A-B1B6-F9C43D998038.jpeg
 
On a good day I can get two 35ml feeds into her. Mostly I can only get one feed in. The limitation is that if I tube feed into a very full crop I risk causing aspiration.
According to the great oracle at Google the average chicken drinks a half a liter a day. That is 500mls.
So, if that is true, my tube feeding is getting her roughly 10% of her fluid requirements.
She is getting a bit more from the corn because that is frozen not dried.
What I am tubing is baby bird formula with added Pedialyte (which is basically sugar water with electrolytes). I am adding some extra probiotics and some extra vitamins.
Honestly, I believe that estimate is for an active, LAYING hen. I would go with about a cup (8 oz/320cc/ml) for a non-laying, active hen (more if really hot & panting). Since Bella is A) not full sized, B) Not laying, and C) not active, I would aim for getting 4* oz (120cc/mls)🚰 into her. So, at ~ 70cc, you are getting around 55-60% into her. Once she starts to feel better and become more active...even if just a bit, she will be using more energy, and will use more water in the process, and fluid intake should then increase, too. Can you massage crop more frequently and try for 2-3 feedings instead of 1-2?? That would That would bump fluid from 35-70cc to say, 70-100cc. Yes, I understand crop emptying is a determining factor....and you are probably already doing all you can..:th.this was just a thought.:idunno

That said (and @Ponypoor & @BY Bob feel free to chime in) when I worked as a CNA, there were people who took hardly any fluids & essentially refused to eat...and lived a very long time. You don't want the body to start to shut down, so she needs enough to keep organs, etc healthy, but she doesn't need the fluids that an active chicken would,

* My guesstimate based on inactivity, no egg (eggs have a lot of water in them), and much smaller body/weight than an adult....plus the fact that my young chickens (at about 8 weeks of age) that are very active - when not super hot like recently - were going through about a cup of water per chick per day. Granted, they were/are smaller then than yours are, but Bella is also inactive.
 
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Honestly, I believe that estimate is for an active, LAYING hen. I would go with about a cup (8 oz/320cc/ml) for a non-laying, active hen (more if really hot & panting). Since Bella is A) not full sized, B) Not laying, and C) not active, I would aim for getting 4* oz (120cc/mls)🚰 into her. So, at ~ 70cc, you are getting around 55-60% into her. Once she starts to feel better and become more active...even if just a bit, she will be using more energy, and will use more water in the process, and fluid intake should then increase, too. Can you massage crop more frequently and try for 2-3 feedings instead of 1-2?? That would That would bump fluid from 35-70cc to say, 70-100cc. Yes, I understand crop emptying is a determining factor....and you are probably already doing all you can..:th.this was just a thought.:idunno

That said (and @Ponypoor & @BY Bob feel free to chime in) when I worked as a CNA, there were people who took hardly any fluids & essentially refused to eat...and lived a very long time. You don't want the body to start to shut down, so she needs enough to keep organs, etc healthy, but she doesn't need the fluids that an active chicken would,

* My guesstimate based on inactivity, no egg (eggs have a lot of water in them), and much smaller body/weight than an adult....plus the fact that my young chickens (at about 8 weeks of age) that are very active - when not super hot like recently - were going through about a cup of water per chick per day. Granted, they were/are smaller then than yours are, but Bella is also inactive.
Yes I think that is all true. And if you think about it, must be true or she wouldn't be alive.
Her crop is very weird. It isn't blocked - it is like her whole GI system just isn't working (which is why I am obsessed with poop). I can more-or-less empty her crop with some massage and lifting it up. But then if she moves or I stop pressing it, all the corn comes rushing back in. I actually (of course) looked into this and it turns out chickens are known to have food move the wrong way back into the crop!
And on the subject of poop - last night she had two modest but nice looking poops and another one when she was outside with me and her Hooligan friends this afternoon.
 
Let me introduce you all to the 2 newest flock members. We have a full silkie and silkie cross chick. Even being a cross and coming from a tiny egg it is still shocking how much bigger the cross chick is to it's sibling. In this video Chiquita is angry. I let her and the 2 chicks out of the coop for a few minutes and the cochin girls took that opportunity to run in and get to the chick feed. I had already broke up one fight between Chiquita and them because they just looked in her direction. I saved those 2 girls by shutting the door so she could not beat them up again. Before I could let Chiquita back in with the babies I had to go pack the cochins out of the coop to safety. No one besides Branch is allowed near her at the moment. This morning when I opened up the coop everyone left but Branch. He stayed beside the tote calling to Chiquita. I took her and the chicks out of the tote and he went and sat down beside them tidbitting. I have never had a better rooster with babies, in minutes both chicks were under him and he just sat there while she dustbathed.
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Mums and babies! 🥰🥰🥰🥰
 
I love this thread. It is very therapeutic and entertaining for me. This month has been so hard on me but FBA thread gave me smiles and kept me going. Thank you Bob! You are so good at moderating/organizing/writing I feel like any employer is lucky to have you.

Why do I have chickens: I had the ideas of getting chickens simply for food security in January of 2020 when Covid started to be bad in China. I love eggs and I've always wanted to produce my food as much as possible. At that time we lived in New Mexico and had a good chance of moving so we didn't do it. We did move to Wilmington NC in August 2020 and expect to be here for the foreseeable future. I made sure chickens are allowed in our new house.

Our first flock: March 10th, 2021, about 3 months after we closed on our new house, we got 8 chicks at the local feed store. I wanted 6 but my chicken-owning friend told me that chicks die easily so get 8 (yes she is an enabler). Being the ignorant human being I was, of course I picked good egg layers. We have 4 golden buffs (probably same as golden comets) + 2 RIR (production red) + 2 Rhode Island Blue (RIB/production blue). In raising babies, we completely fell in love with them, my husband more so. He played with all of them for hours every day.
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I particularly love this picture when all 8 of them roosted on top of the cardboard box. SO CUTE.
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They are all doing well to this day. Here they are:
1. Foggy the rooster (RIB). Of course we will end up with a rooster. You can see him being huge and spilled out of my husband's hand in the first two pictures above... He was super sweet as a chick and teenager. He turned into a jerk pretty quick. I am a wimp so he attacked me anytime I was close by. He remained cuddly with my husband for a long time but eventually he had to kick Foggy's butt weekly.

Mid April of this year, we got a visit from city inspector telling us we need to get rid of our rooster due to complaints. We live within city limits and are not allowed to have roosters. To me such regulation is government overreach. We only really have one neighbor that would hear the crow and we made sure they are fine with it. Even with this neighbor, we know that given the distance from coop to their house, they'd barely hear it inside the house. In any case, Foggy was rehomed within a couple days.
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2. Ginger (Golden comets). Ginger is the alpha hen, an escape artist. We thought we named her well after we watched "Chicken Run". She is usually not sweet, but she totally lets you know when she wants to be picked up. She does everything with a purpose. Man she is so smart.
She is the only one that can jump on this metal spiky fence, then she flew over the green fence to reach to my garden... She remembered this trick after doing this once accidentally.
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Here she is out and about:
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3. Tina (RIR). Tina is the 2nd fittest after Ginger. To be honest, I am not sure on the exact pecking order after Ginger because it appears to be circular as A>B>C>A. She is probably number 2. Tina is very sweet and would kick off other chickens on the lap. She is a little devil.
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4 Honey (Golden comets). Honey is our sweetest hen and her pecking order is second to the last. She jumps on your lap and would stay on your lap forever if you don't kick her off.
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5 Wendy (RIR). Wendy is our heaviest hen. She walks funny because she is big. I constantly call her Maggie in my head thanks to RC. She is sweet too but she is really particular on how to lay on you (cause she is fat). She is pretty bossy to Poopy and Honey .
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6 Light (Golden comet). She is my husband's THE GREATEST HEN EVER. I've written about her on this thread a little bit. https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...es-stories-of-our-flock.1286630/post-25550036
She is really gentle and cute. She is at the bottom of pecking order, but she would pick on Wendy. It's very weird. Due to her house chicken experience, she now comes to the house for breakfast every morning.
Here she is sitting right by the meal worm bin looking all innocent!! She surely knows about food security. (Yes there was a time that I forgot to close the lid and she got in.........)
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7 Poopy (Golden comet). Poopy gave us our first egg. She started laying before she was 4 months old!!! Oh the evil production line. She is sweet too but has to be picked up.
Here is her pretty pullet face at 4 months old.
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8 Inky (RIB). Inky is the only chicken that is not sweet. In fact, she is really skittish. She is also the fluffiest chicken. Her feather is sooo pretty. She is the only one molted during their first year. She is also the only one that has ever gone broody (three times already). In fact, she is still sitting in the coop and today is day 29. Good thing that she really takes good care of herself.

Inky giving me the evil look.
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Inky getting my elderberry leaves.
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This year's addition. Excuse me that I have to write a 2nd post to finish this 🤣 The quick summary is that we added 4 chicks this year, all fathered by Foggy.
 
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