- Sep 4, 2014
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Hello everyone! I'm new here. This is my first post. I have 5 hens that make up the Fuster Cluck. One of my girls (she's 1.5 years old) was found yesterday laying in the coop by the feeder. I thought maybe she was dust bathing, but she didn't get up when I walked to the coop - which is really strange.
I opened the coop door to let them out for the afternoon and got her on video stumbling out. She's very unsteady, using her wings to prop her up and will just flop down. http://youtu.be/v0IMWDV_hN0
Not knowing what to do, I went into sick-chicken mode. Here's what's happened since:
1) I gave her a warm Epsom salt bath and checked her vent. Not a poopy butt, and vent looks fine. Poked around for an impacted egg, and she looks clear. She looked like she was enjoying it, so I drew her another warm bath to let her relax for another 10 minutes or so while I made her some food. She smells bad - like there's infection somewhere, but I can't see anything out of the ordinary. She's also breathing with open beak off and on, which I think is a bad sign.



2) Cooked up some oatmeal, mixed it with some of the younger hen's medicated starter feed, coconut oil and olive oil to lube the tubes. I dropped in some vitamin D capsules in it and some Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) capsules. She ate as much as she could reach. I rotated the bowl and she polished most of it off.
3) Placed her in a cozy pen in the garage for the night to isolate her from the rest of the girls. She stayed put in the same spot for the entire night and didn't get up when we went to check on her this morning.
4) She had a healthy poop today and laid a soft shell-less egg. First one ever.


We're cleaning the coop and dusting it with more DE (although we do this regularly). We're scrubbing the food and water feeders incase there was chicken poop in the water or moldy feed in the feeder. We've added ACV to the coops water. Going to keep her isolated another night and give her de-wormer in her water tomorrow with another bowl of warm oily food.
Any ideas on what this could be?
I opened the coop door to let them out for the afternoon and got her on video stumbling out. She's very unsteady, using her wings to prop her up and will just flop down. http://youtu.be/v0IMWDV_hN0

Not knowing what to do, I went into sick-chicken mode. Here's what's happened since:
1) I gave her a warm Epsom salt bath and checked her vent. Not a poopy butt, and vent looks fine. Poked around for an impacted egg, and she looks clear. She looked like she was enjoying it, so I drew her another warm bath to let her relax for another 10 minutes or so while I made her some food. She smells bad - like there's infection somewhere, but I can't see anything out of the ordinary. She's also breathing with open beak off and on, which I think is a bad sign.
2) Cooked up some oatmeal, mixed it with some of the younger hen's medicated starter feed, coconut oil and olive oil to lube the tubes. I dropped in some vitamin D capsules in it and some Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) capsules. She ate as much as she could reach. I rotated the bowl and she polished most of it off.
3) Placed her in a cozy pen in the garage for the night to isolate her from the rest of the girls. She stayed put in the same spot for the entire night and didn't get up when we went to check on her this morning.
4) She had a healthy poop today and laid a soft shell-less egg. First one ever.
We're cleaning the coop and dusting it with more DE (although we do this regularly). We're scrubbing the food and water feeders incase there was chicken poop in the water or moldy feed in the feeder. We've added ACV to the coops water. Going to keep her isolated another night and give her de-wormer in her water tomorrow with another bowl of warm oily food.
Any ideas on what this could be?

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