Hello everyone,
It has been so long since I have visited this forum. I thought it might be helpful to get some second opinions on a very sick hen that I have been treating. You guys might have a suggestion that I have not thought of. This is going to be a long post, but I thought it best to give all the information as something may occur to one of you that I have missed.
Background info: Emma is a 9 year old Welsummer. She is head bird in my flock, and a really sweet and amazing girl. She has had issues from day one. As a chick she was very weak and required a lot of extra attention. She was part of my first ever order of chicks, and I never determined exactly what was wrong with her. I suspect some sort of vitamin deficiency or something. Regardless, she pulled through to become top bird. Since she was a chick she has had issues with weakness in her legs. She walks funny, and has also had laying issues in the past. She has laid soft shelled eggs, and has had those weird, nasty cheesy looking egg type things (I can't remember what the heck they are called) several times in the past.About once a year for the past three years she will have an egg break inside of her. I try to supplement her with extra calcium (the flock of course has free choice oyster shell). When she has had an egg break inside of her, I typically bring her inside, do regular flushes of her vent with cool water and supplement her nutrition for a week or so before she is back to normal and she goes back out with her flock. I worried that she would become an internal layer, but she has never had any fluid build up in her abdomen.
Okay, so to bring this to the present: I have recently had my first baby, so have not been as vigilant with my flock as usual. Emma has been laying since spring (she had stopped last summer after she had an egg break inside of her). A week and a half ago, I noticed she was acting off, I inspected her and there was yolk and poop on her back feathers. When I brought her inside to clean her up and start our usual egg-breaking-inside process, I realized that I had caught it too late. We had a case of flystrike. For anyone who doesn't know what that is- look it up on google and prepare to be horrified.
Here is what I have done so far: I cleaned out the wound, flushed all the maggots out. The first flush was with peroxide, and after that she has been flushed twice a day with betadine diluted in water. The wound is the size of a silver dollar and deep. By the time I discovered it (I feel terrible that I did not catch this earlier, being a new mom has really taken it out of me) it was obviously infected, with pus oozing out and a terrible smell. After flushing twice a day I apply vetracyn and pack it with neosporin. There have been no more maggots, I got them all. She is being kept inside, and I gave her a 4 day round of Pen G injections.
She is skin and bones. I have been giving vitamins and electrolytes in her water but she is not drinking on her own. I started administering subq fluids to hydrate her. The wound looks much, MUCH better since the round of penicillin. She is very inconsistent with her eating. The only thing I can get her to eat regularly is watermelon. She has at times eaten a small amount of crumbles, some salmon and some scrambled eggs, but only a few bites of each. She won't touch yogurt so I have been sprinkling probios powder on her food.
Because the wound is healing and it looks like the infection is clearing up, I have hope for her.
Her stools have been mostly green, watery, lots of wet urates. Some solids in there, but not much.
She has started to look a bit stronger and more aware, but she has recently started puffing up a lot and she seems less interested in food than she even was before, today she is not even wanting her watermelon. I know birds can demonstrate this puffy behavior any time they feel bad, but it made me consider coccidiosis. I am wondering if in her compromised state perhaps cocci would have a chance to overwhelm her? I think at this point it would not hurt to treat her with my liquid corid solution, but I"m not sure how to get it in her. I can try to giver her a dropper with the diluted corid solution, but I'm afraid 1. That I will not be able to get enough of it in her to make a difference, and 2. That in my attempts to get a decent amount of the water/corid mix into her I will cause her to aspirate.
I was giving her water in a dropper and she did aspirate once. I was terrified. Luckily she was ok. She really fights me on it and I don't feel like I can get a substantial amount of liquid into her in a safe manner.
SO.....my questions:
1. Is there a concentrated dosage of the liquid corid I could give her directly, to make sure she gets enough and reduce my risk of aspirating her by not having to attempt to get quite so much liquid down her throat?
2. Anyone have any other ideas or suggestions? Anything I might be missing?
3. Food suggestions: I'm trying to come up with other ideas to entice her to get some nourishment.
A few more notes:
She has not been wormed. I used to worm preventatively, but now I have a fecal test done at our avian vet to check for worms every year and it has always come back clean. We haven't had one yet this year, and I have not seen evidence of worms, but am afraid at this point worming her might be too stressful to her system anyway.
Vet care. I usually would try and take a hen to the vet in this condition. However, financially it is simply not possible at this time. I feel terrible not taking her to the vet...my girls are pets, but I am self employed, have no paid maternity leave, and just do not have the money now.
Thank you if you took the time to read this super long post. Emma is such a sweet girl and a very good leader for the flock. I want to do everything I can to help her....I'm hoping that someone reading this will have had some experience and ideas.
Thanks again!
Andrea
It has been so long since I have visited this forum. I thought it might be helpful to get some second opinions on a very sick hen that I have been treating. You guys might have a suggestion that I have not thought of. This is going to be a long post, but I thought it best to give all the information as something may occur to one of you that I have missed.
Background info: Emma is a 9 year old Welsummer. She is head bird in my flock, and a really sweet and amazing girl. She has had issues from day one. As a chick she was very weak and required a lot of extra attention. She was part of my first ever order of chicks, and I never determined exactly what was wrong with her. I suspect some sort of vitamin deficiency or something. Regardless, she pulled through to become top bird. Since she was a chick she has had issues with weakness in her legs. She walks funny, and has also had laying issues in the past. She has laid soft shelled eggs, and has had those weird, nasty cheesy looking egg type things (I can't remember what the heck they are called) several times in the past.About once a year for the past three years she will have an egg break inside of her. I try to supplement her with extra calcium (the flock of course has free choice oyster shell). When she has had an egg break inside of her, I typically bring her inside, do regular flushes of her vent with cool water and supplement her nutrition for a week or so before she is back to normal and she goes back out with her flock. I worried that she would become an internal layer, but she has never had any fluid build up in her abdomen.
Okay, so to bring this to the present: I have recently had my first baby, so have not been as vigilant with my flock as usual. Emma has been laying since spring (she had stopped last summer after she had an egg break inside of her). A week and a half ago, I noticed she was acting off, I inspected her and there was yolk and poop on her back feathers. When I brought her inside to clean her up and start our usual egg-breaking-inside process, I realized that I had caught it too late. We had a case of flystrike. For anyone who doesn't know what that is- look it up on google and prepare to be horrified.
Here is what I have done so far: I cleaned out the wound, flushed all the maggots out. The first flush was with peroxide, and after that she has been flushed twice a day with betadine diluted in water. The wound is the size of a silver dollar and deep. By the time I discovered it (I feel terrible that I did not catch this earlier, being a new mom has really taken it out of me) it was obviously infected, with pus oozing out and a terrible smell. After flushing twice a day I apply vetracyn and pack it with neosporin. There have been no more maggots, I got them all. She is being kept inside, and I gave her a 4 day round of Pen G injections.
She is skin and bones. I have been giving vitamins and electrolytes in her water but she is not drinking on her own. I started administering subq fluids to hydrate her. The wound looks much, MUCH better since the round of penicillin. She is very inconsistent with her eating. The only thing I can get her to eat regularly is watermelon. She has at times eaten a small amount of crumbles, some salmon and some scrambled eggs, but only a few bites of each. She won't touch yogurt so I have been sprinkling probios powder on her food.
Because the wound is healing and it looks like the infection is clearing up, I have hope for her.
Her stools have been mostly green, watery, lots of wet urates. Some solids in there, but not much.
She has started to look a bit stronger and more aware, but she has recently started puffing up a lot and she seems less interested in food than she even was before, today she is not even wanting her watermelon. I know birds can demonstrate this puffy behavior any time they feel bad, but it made me consider coccidiosis. I am wondering if in her compromised state perhaps cocci would have a chance to overwhelm her? I think at this point it would not hurt to treat her with my liquid corid solution, but I"m not sure how to get it in her. I can try to giver her a dropper with the diluted corid solution, but I'm afraid 1. That I will not be able to get enough of it in her to make a difference, and 2. That in my attempts to get a decent amount of the water/corid mix into her I will cause her to aspirate.
I was giving her water in a dropper and she did aspirate once. I was terrified. Luckily she was ok. She really fights me on it and I don't feel like I can get a substantial amount of liquid into her in a safe manner.
SO.....my questions:
1. Is there a concentrated dosage of the liquid corid I could give her directly, to make sure she gets enough and reduce my risk of aspirating her by not having to attempt to get quite so much liquid down her throat?
2. Anyone have any other ideas or suggestions? Anything I might be missing?
3. Food suggestions: I'm trying to come up with other ideas to entice her to get some nourishment.
A few more notes:
She has not been wormed. I used to worm preventatively, but now I have a fecal test done at our avian vet to check for worms every year and it has always come back clean. We haven't had one yet this year, and I have not seen evidence of worms, but am afraid at this point worming her might be too stressful to her system anyway.
Vet care. I usually would try and take a hen to the vet in this condition. However, financially it is simply not possible at this time. I feel terrible not taking her to the vet...my girls are pets, but I am self employed, have no paid maternity leave, and just do not have the money now.
Thank you if you took the time to read this super long post. Emma is such a sweet girl and a very good leader for the flock. I want to do everything I can to help her....I'm hoping that someone reading this will have had some experience and ideas.
Thanks again!
Andrea
