Help! Significant weight loss in my Sussex

[dillpickle]

Hi,

We adopted a speckled sussex called Maisey nearly 18 months ago along with a couple of Isa Browns. She's probably about 4 years old now. When we got her, she was top of the pecking order. This past winter (we're heading into summer now), they all molted, and Maisey seems to have been demoted to the bottom of the flock and I discovered yesterday that she's lost heaps of weight (she still has lots of excellent feathers, so I couldn't tell by looking at her). She's sleeping a lot during the day compared to the other girls, and her comb has shrunk and is much paler than it used to be. I'm sure she hasn't been laying since she molted. Any ideas about what might be wrong?

Thanks for your help!!

 

[bustermommy]

Every time on here I read about hens being skinny and/or losing weight, they turn out to have worms. Have you wormed her? I would try that first if no eggs, weight loss and pale comb are the only symptoms she has.

 

[dillpickle]

I haven't wormed her - I will try that! I hope it works because she's my favourite

 

[bustermommy]

I consider dawg53 as the expert on worming here on BYC. He has a lot of posts giving details of which wormers to try and what they kill, etc. Whenever I have questions about them, I always search for his posts.

Hope that works, since worms appear to be one of the things that are treated very successfully if they're caught in time.

 

[Tracy the chick]

Hi i buy " Marriages Quality Traditional Poultry Feeds With Flubenvet" i feed it for 7 days and is an excellent wormer... You can buy flubenvet on its own too... Ive been giving my skinny chicken baby porrage...

 

[OregonChickenGal]

Besides worming, also check her for mites/lice.

 

[dillpickle]

I'm sad to report that Maisey died around 12 hours after worming. She had passed a mess of worms in her poo, so that was definitely the issue, but unfortunately my lack of education about chooks and worms meant that I didn't catch it in time. None of the others are showing bad side effects from the treatment so hopefully it's successful for them. I'm a bit (a lot) cross with myself for bad chicken management, but I will endeavour to educate myself better about the early signs of parasite infection, as well as establishing a regular worming protocol. Kick, kick, kick!

Thanks for the advice.

 

[seminolewind]

I'm sorry that Maisey died. Alot of times we can only learn things from poor outcomes.