Heat Stroke & A Bully Chicken

[carajane612]

Hoping to get some advice on 2 issues I have that both involve each other....

Small flock consisting of 4 hens... two Barred Rocks & two Silver Laced Wyandotte's. A few weeks ago we had a heat wave roll through with temps in the 90's with high humidity & dew points. We had 2 large fans blowing on opposite ends of the coop/run, water changed twice a day, shade & frozen water bottles available but unfortunately one of our Barred Rocks suffered what we believe to be heat stroke. Her legs are paralyzed but she is still laying an egg every day, eating, drinking & showing signs of strong survival! She can walk baby steps by furiously flapping her wings or by doing an "army crawl" with her wings. After the heat stroke we brought her inside our house (AIR CONDITIONED) in a soft sided dog kennel with access to food & water during the day & at night we would bring her back out to the coop so she could be with her sisters.

With cooler temps we decided to move her back out to the coop/run full time & since then one of our Wyandotte's has started to be a real bully. She attacks our heat stroke patient in her face & doesn't let her get to the food/water. She has also pecked our other Wyandotte completely bald/bloody on her back right above her tail feathers. We have since put blue-kote on her wound & set her up with a fancy "saddle" to avoid any more injury.

Today I put the bully Wyandotte in a dog crate by the coop/run to avoid further injury to our other three chickens. Should I move her completely away from the other chickens?

I'm wondering if anyone else has experience with either of these two issues they can pass along to me!? Thanks for the help!

 

[Nutcase]

Your injured Barred Rock needs to be separated or she will be pecked to death. It is perfectly natural for a hen to want to remove a weak flock member, but obviously you don't want her to do that so you should separate the injured one as soon as possible. Another option is to completely remove the bully Wyandotte from the flock so your BR can go back to her friends in peace. In the long run, she may or may not recover and if she doesn't the best thing might be to cull her permanently but for now it's too early to tell. I will do a bit of research for you sometime very soon and see what I can dig up on this site. You should do the same - there's heaps to find!


Good job with treating the injured Wyandotte!

 

[carajane612]

Hey Thanks, Nutcase!!

I've been doing a little research on BYC & it's been helpful! I did read a success story on someone else whose chicken suffered a heat stroke & she had a good recovery.

I'm still hopeful as I can only have 4 chickens in the city & they have truly become part of the family! I will keep her as long as she seems happy, healthy, continues to eat, drink & lay eggs. She still has shown no sign of wanting to walk or move her legs so that makes me nervous. I feel like it's a full time job moving her around all of the time! She can move a little, maybe I am enabling her too much? The winter might be a challenge & if she is not walking by that time I will have to make a decision to keep or cull.

I do currently have her in a hard sided dog crate right next to our coop so she can still be by her sisters but away from being pecked to death. Maybe once she has made a full recovery, I will choose to separate our bully Wyandotte until she can learn to behave herself!

Thanks again for your help!

 

[Nutcase]

No problem. Good luck!

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