Hi There
One of our hens died today.
Just wanted to share a bit of the back story so we can find out what happened to her.
2 days ago our Black Australorp (Raven) started mildly gasping/wheezing along with the occasional cough and her butt was contracting with her breath a bit. We had another hen go broody and was sitting on eggs in the nest that Raven liked to lay her eggs in.
Once we noticed that there was a broody chook on a batch of eggs we moved the hen and the eggs to another coop. This was shortly after we noticed Raven wheezing.
Raven went in and out of coop a lot in the beginning and had a dust bath. We thought she may be egg bound at this stage. She was however, still pooing.
Yesterday we bathed her in epsom salts. She didn't hop on the nest much after than and the wheezing and coughing got worse.
We then thought it could be gapeworm and obtained a suitable de-wormer. We treated the entire flock, but were fairly sure Raven didn't have any as she had gone off her feed and water.
We checked her for gapeworm by placing a cotton bud down her throat, but no worms appeared. We dosed her separately.
Another thing we thought of was that she may have had a repository infection, but there was no mucus on her nose or in her eyes.
Finally on the day before it all started we tossed some fish carcasses out for the chickens to nibble on and this invited a large number of wasps to the yard. We are unsure if she may have been stung by a wasp.
We would really like to know what happened in case any of our other hens has the same symptoms.
Thanks for reading.
One of our hens died today.
Just wanted to share a bit of the back story so we can find out what happened to her.
2 days ago our Black Australorp (Raven) started mildly gasping/wheezing along with the occasional cough and her butt was contracting with her breath a bit. We had another hen go broody and was sitting on eggs in the nest that Raven liked to lay her eggs in.
Once we noticed that there was a broody chook on a batch of eggs we moved the hen and the eggs to another coop. This was shortly after we noticed Raven wheezing.
Raven went in and out of coop a lot in the beginning and had a dust bath. We thought she may be egg bound at this stage. She was however, still pooing.
Yesterday we bathed her in epsom salts. She didn't hop on the nest much after than and the wheezing and coughing got worse.
We then thought it could be gapeworm and obtained a suitable de-wormer. We treated the entire flock, but were fairly sure Raven didn't have any as she had gone off her feed and water.
We checked her for gapeworm by placing a cotton bud down her throat, but no worms appeared. We dosed her separately.
Another thing we thought of was that she may have had a repository infection, but there was no mucus on her nose or in her eyes.
Finally on the day before it all started we tossed some fish carcasses out for the chickens to nibble on and this invited a large number of wasps to the yard. We are unsure if she may have been stung by a wasp.
We would really like to know what happened in case any of our other hens has the same symptoms.
Thanks for reading.
