Gaping Hen? did Qtip test, no red worms- video added

[hithere753]

Hi,

This is my third week of owning chickens. One of the hens who hasn't started laying yet was on her perch last nite and today constantly thrusting her head forward like she was trying to blow something out. Her comb is turning whitish and is fallen over and looks dry. We read threads here on gapeworm and stuck a qtip dowm her throat but didn't see any red worms on qtip. Not sure if it went down trachea or esophagus and we really couldn't see much once qtip went in. We have had her for a week now and just she was anti social since she would always want to be on a perch inside the coop and had to be shooed out to interact with others. We thoguht she was just hiding because we had 2 RIR in there before that were being very dominant before we rehomed them. Any ideas now what we should do with the hen? The person we bought her from said she was a month away from laying eggs.

 

[speckledhen]

She may have gotten something stuck in her throat or feel like there is. Get a syringe of veg oil and just open her beak and squirt some in, then some water. That sometimes helps things move along.

Gapeworm isn't all that common, but you can worm her with Safeguard/fenbenzadole/panacur, which should kill it if she has it, plus most other worms.

You can also rub oil into her comb. Sometimes, the combs do become dry. There is a fungal thing called favus that causes peeling skin on comb, face and wattles, but usually, it's just that they have dry skin if it's just dry looking without the peeling.


A picture of the hen in question may help us diagnose her general condition, though.

 

[hithere753]

Thank you for your advice about the oil Speckledhen. I will see if I can find an eyedropper or syringe at the store. Attached is a video. The angle is not great, but she basically thrusts her head forward to blow out. It was more pronounced last nite. I have also seen her shake her head and make a coughing noise
.

 

[speckledhen]

That girl is very sick. She cannot breathe. Something is either stuck in her windpipe or she is dying from something else. Her comb isn't right, her eyes look bad as well. I'm afraid this is worse than I thought.

FYI, with gapeworm, the worm doesn't come out on a Qtip. It would have to have turpentine or some wormer on the Qtip. It isn't as easy as sticking a dry or wet qtip down the throat, if that's the problem she has.

 

[hithere753]

Thank you very much for your help Speckled hen. as soon as I read your post, I drove her back to the lady who sold her to me off of craigslist. Hopefully she will know the right course of treatment. Unfortunately, I did not have a seperate place to quarantine the new chickens last weekend and put them in together. I now have one buff orphington that now coughs every so often and my frequently laying polish has not layed for 3 days. The polish has only missed 1 day in sets of 3 or 4 before. I went from 3-4 eggs per day in the beginning of the week down to 1-2 now from the same 4 chickens. Do you think the rest of the chickens are now infected? The decrease egg production corresponds with the white hen getting sick. What should I do?

 

[speckledhen]

Hard to say about the cough. I've never heard a chicken cough in the almost 7 years I've owned them. Are you sure it's a cough and not a sneeze? All you can do is watch for symptoms and separate any that show discharges from eyes or nose. Yes, that one could have infected the others, but then again, could be it is something only related to that one bird, something internal. Time will tell.

The cessation of laying doesn't concern me if the bird was just recently laying. They are not machines so they do have on and off periods. If the bird is going on the nest repeatedly and doesn't produce an egg, that would concern me.