Help for a Hen off her food

[rebrascora]

Also...
..... how much corn do you give them? I'm assuming this is mixed corn which they refer to as Scratch in the USA. Too much can cause problems in some birds and it is safer to give none that be overly generous.
Since you specifically asked for food recommendations I would try her with scrambled eggs and you can also offer a pouch of meat or fish cat food or some slivers of raw liver or a little natural yoghurt mixed into some chick crumbs to make a wet mash or some cottage cheese. I would also get some Nettex Nutri Drops for poultry. They come in a little bottle with a dropper in a box and cost about £10 but a few drops can give sick birds a real boost.

 

[moraylass]

Hi
How is she doing now?
Some birds will go off their food for a few days and sulk a bit during moult, but she doesn't look like she is in full moult yet. Can you give her access to a bunch of spinach or kale and see if she is interested in that. Hanging a bunch of whole leaves by their stalks is preferable to chopped, bagged supermarket stuff. I can see that she has access to some lovely grass. Have you noticed her eating that?

Can you describe the empty egg shell she laid? Was it a fully formed hard shell with nothing inside or a soft membrane? If the latter, was it white/blue or a manky pinkish brown flesh colour.... I'm assuming she lays blue or green eggs ordinarily.
Can you check her abdomen for any unusual swelling. This is best done by cupping your hand between her legs and feeling for any fullness. Doing this at night whilst they are roosting is easiest and comparing to adjacent hens to get an idea of what is normal, makes it easier to assess. Checking crop function at the same time is a good idea ie. feeling the crop at night and making a mental note of how full and how soft or hard, then removing access to food and checking again in the morning when it should be empty.

The problem with using Flubenvet is that the birds have to be actively eating in order to ingest enough of the medication to be effective. If this hen is off her food she won't eat enough. I would certainly consider having a faecal float (referred to as a worm egg count here in the UK) done to see if worms or coccidia are the issue, before worming. It is only about £10 via Westgate Labs. You can buy the sampling kits from them online and send them back in a prepaid envelope and sometimes even get next day results. It really is an excellent service. I've been using them for over 10 years and when there have been problems (usually due to postal issues) they have been extremely good at rectifying the matter by sending me replacement kits free of charge. They are also very knowledgeable about internal parasites and happy to give friendly, helpful advice about what level of worm eggs in faeces warrants treatment.

Hopefully she is just going into a moult and is feeling under the weather due to that. Some of my girls take it much harder than others.

Thank you very much. It's been most helpful.

As she'd been pecking at the grass a bit, we thought to try chopped up kale, but she just picked it up then dropped it again! (The other hens wolfed it down)

So we tried some chopped cheese, and she took some of that yesterday, which seemed more promising.

Ready to try again today, she started pecking the corn put down for the others. Not vigorously, but definitely trying.

We've never experienced anything like this before with her, or the others, and there's no obvious feather loss, but we're now thinking (hoping) it's down to a moult.

Couldn't find any poop when we had her temporarily isolated, so haven't pursued that as yet, but maybe we need to be more aware of a better diet around this time of year.

Appreciate all the help!

 

[moraylass]

Also...
..... how much corn do you give them? I'm assuming this is mixed corn which they refer to as Scratch in the USA. Too much can cause problems in some birds and it is safer to give none that be overly generous.
Since you specifically asked for food recommendations I would try her with scrambled eggs and you can also offer a pouch of meat or fish cat food or some slivers of raw liver or a little natural yoghurt mixed into some chick crumbs to make a wet mash or some cottage cheese. I would also get some Nettex Nutri Drops for poultry. They come in a little bottle with a dropper in a box and cost about £10 but a few drops can give sick birds a real boost.

The corn is just a 'treat', be maybe we should do something different in the autumn, and your list is a great help. I think our emergency kit will have some Nutri Drops in the near future!