Help! 3 year old hen refusing to eat, losing weight, otherwise looks good.

[Dville Chix]

Hi... I have a 33 month old speckled sussex who is not eating. She is still drinking. She has been gradually losing weight for a couple months and over the last couple days has begun refusing to eat at all. She is down to 4.1 lbs and we will probably begin tube feeding her today. We had thought the weight loss was related to her having trouble tolerating the cold. Recently when the girls are out free ranging she will find a sunny spot and just lay there rather than forage with the others. We have taken her into the house on particularly cold nights. She stopped laying over a year ago and has not produced a single egg in that time, so we doubt that she is egg bound. We suspect she has ovarian cancer since her sister (another speckled sussex acquired from the same source at the same time) stopped laying about the same time and recently died. A necropsy of that bird showed advanced ovarian cancer. Unlike her sister, this bird is still alert and interactive and does not appear to be in any pain. Tail is up and aside from not eating, and sunbathing, she behaves normally. We are reluctant to put her down if she can still have time with quality of life. She has a fabulous personality and and is a strong stabilizing influence on the rest of the flock. We also don't want to jump to the conclusion that she definitely has ovarian cancer, or that the OC is what the issue is right now. We took a fecal sample and looked at it under a microscope ourselves and we don't see an excessive level of bacteria. Nowhere near the level we observed on another occasion when we had a different chicken sick with a bacterial infection. There is always SOME bacteria in chicken droppings, so we think that the bacteria present may be within "normal" parameters. The bacteria that are present seem to be non-motile bacilli and cocci (bacteria cocci, not coccidiosis oocysts). We saw no oocysts at all and no spirochetes. The bacilli only seem to float around, but the cocci quiver in place. We also saw leaf fragments in her feces that seem undigested. Anybody have any suggestions?

 

[Eggcessive]

Sorry that your hen is losing weight. Have you checked her crop to make sure that it is emptying overnight? Does it feel empty, full and hard, doughy, or puffy in early morning? Frequently crop disorders occur due to decreased motility in the digestive system if there is pressure inside the abdomen from internal laying or other reproductive problems.

I would crush 1/2 tablet of human vitamin B complex over her food every day, plus a few drops of water or oil for it to stick, to see if that helps her appetite. Bits of scrambled egg, tuna, liver, canned cat food, or ground meat in small amounts can be good to tempt them to eat.

 

[Dville Chix]

thanks for suggestions.... Her crop was absolutely empty both yesterday afternoon and this morning. She finally ate a little watermelon and canned (unsalted) corn late this morning, but only a little bit. I would say that she has eaten less than 30 calories. We have tried dry mealworms, tortillas (usually her favorite), bread, scrambled eggs, cracked corn, shelled sunflower seeds, and regular layer pellets. She wouldn't eat any of those. We can resort to tube feeding if necessary, but my real worry is WHY she isn't eating. There has to be a reason she doesn't want to eat. She doesn't look or behave sick and she doesn't behave like she is in pain. No bloating or waterbelly. Palpation of the abdomen is not revealing anything amiss. Her abdomen feels the same as other, healthy birds. I am stumped.​

 

[Eggcessive]

Well there probably is a reason she doesn’t feel like eating. Chicken feed mixed with water is good to feed. You cann try making little dough balls out of it to slip into her beak. If you want to try tube feeding, you can finely grind some chicken feed, mix it with a lot of water, or get some KayTee baby bird feed at Walmart or a pet store. Aquarium air tubing or oxygen tubing can be made into a feeding tub and connected to a large syringe. A vet will sometimes sell feeding tubes. Here is a good thread and an extra video about tube feeding:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/go-team-tube-feeding-updated-12-29-2019.805728/
https://www.google.com/search?q=tube+feeding+a+chicken&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari