Help! Sick and injured Silkie Roo

[NarrawalleeChickens]

I was crying reading azygous' last post above, then saw yours immediately above mine.

He looks 1000% better and is eating a drinking. He may pull through this after all! I'm rooting for him!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks @Swbertrand1! It's so good to see some slight improvement. He is still very lethargic and not eating much but we hope with some rest and recuperation he will make it. Let us know if you have any suggestions on where to go from here with caring for him!

 

[Swbertrand1]

Thanks @Swbertrand1! It's so good to see some slight improvement. He is still very lethargic and not eating much but we hope with some rest and recuperation he will make it. Let us know if you have any suggestions on where to go from here with caring for him!

Beyond azygous' ALWAYS sound advice, I have little to offer medically.

The only thing I could suggest is lots of love. As gently as you can and in a quite area, pick him up, love on him, let him know that you're pulling for him. Gently stroke him, and gently hold him close if he's accepting of it. It's amazing the response we get out of our sick chickens when we do that. They KNOW when someone is on their side and pulling for them.

The only other thing I can offer is to keep him in a quiet place where he can recuperate. Make sure he eats/drinks and gets some solid protein and vitamins via food, water, or both. He's probably been, like you stated, in shock. Chickens have a sense about when their ticket has been punched (they are going to die), and I think he got to that point under the ladder. That he survived is nothing short of miraculous!

We had a Silkie hen that got herself trapped in some fencing a few years back, and though she wasn't injured, it literally scared her to death. We found her alive, but she was out of it, and died shortly thereafter, and it only took 3 hours from the last time she was seen OK to her deatch.

So, my point is that I think this guy might be on his way back from the brink. Just keep him comfortable, monitor him, make sure he eats and drinks, and give him LOTS of reassurance...

 

[azygous]

Keep encouraging him to drink sugar water. Make it warm. A chicken with low glucose will fool you into thinking it's dying. It's amazing how sugar water can often revive a very sick chicken.

Feed him warm boiled rice with a little egg stirred in. That seems to be one thing my sick chickens all will eat, and it can do wonders.

Let's hold off on the antibiotic for another 24 hours and see what he does. Do you have any vitamin B complex on hand? If he continues to improve, that can often strengthen nerve connections and make his legs stronger.

 

[NarrawalleeChickens]

Thanks @azygous and @Swbertrand1. I will make him some rice and see how that goes and if he will eat.

I forgot to mention that we have discovered he has lice (I'm almost certain they are poultry lice as we dealt with red mites sometime ago and these are bigger and elongated brown critters). I have used poultry dust, permethrin spray and have put a small drop of ivermectin on the back of his neck which may have been overkill but I wanted to make sure that we get rid of them quickly.

His crop feels swollen and puffy and after he has a drink of water he seems to have a little burp. He seems to have not improved at all since this morning and may have even declined a bit again. He is spending most of the time sitting with his neck towards the ground and his beak touching the floor. I don't have any vitamin b complex but have been adding this (https://www.vetsense.com.au/product/vetsense-avivital/) to his water which has various vitamin (B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B12, A, D3, E, C).

I will keep you update on his progress over the next 24 hours.

Thanks again!

 

[NarrawalleeChickens]

Hey @azygous and @Swbertrand1. Unfortunately Popcorn died about 3 hours ago. He was in my partners arms when he left us and we hope he didn't suffer too much. Briefly before he passed we started to think he maybe had sour crop and that was what caused the bad smell I mentioned in some of my earlier posts. All in all I think that the stress of the ladder accident led to an accumulation of other ailments due to him being underweight and stressed.

Thanks so much for all your caring words and advice.

We will not be getting a necropsy done unfortunately as we live 3.5 hours from Sydney Australia and there is currently a COVID lockdown which makes it difficult for us to access an avian vet or university anytime soon and we don't have the strength to do it ourselves.

I'm not sure if it would help diagnose the cause of death at all but popcorn was spitting up a lot of liquid just before he passed. I worry in someways that we maybe caused him to pass more quickly by force feeding him a few bits of water with our 1mL syringe, I was just worried he was severely dehydrated and need liquid as he was barely drinking at all by himself.

Anyway thanks again for all your help, super duper appreciated.

 

[Swbertrand1]

I'm so sorry to hear that :-(

 

[azygous]

You didn't cause his death. He was shutting down already before you gave him water. No doubt his injuries set up the downhill spiral. Internal injuries are not possible to know and treat. There wasn't much more you could have done for him than what you did. He was loved, and that made all the difference to him in his brief life.