HELP - Undigested grass and other oddities in poop of hen recovering from Fox attack

[abientot]

Question: what does it mean when a hen suddenly (after injury) starts having once or twice daily HUGE poops with undigested grass?

Background: I have a three year old Sapphire Gem free-ranging hen who escaped from a fox 9 days ago. She had no external injuries, but was missing almost all of her tail feathers and was unable to walk. Nothing felt broken, so we assumed maybe a sprain or other muscle injury.

We brought her into the house for rehab. She started to walk again on Day 3 (slow and stumbled some), and by day 7 she seemed well enough to be in the pasture with her flock and brought her in at night. She acted mostly fine, just slower and not venturing as far as normal. She ate and drank okay the first week she was in house, but after we let her be with her flock during the day, she didn’t show much interest in food/treats in the house until added some meal
Worms to her pellets. I was concerned that she did not poop overnight the last two nights, so I left her in the house all day to monitor input/output. She did not poop for about 18hours and when

she did it was massive in size and had lots of visible grass.

I have attached a picture of the poop from this evening. Just not sure what else we should be doing or if visible grass in poop is even a major cause of concern. Prior to the Fox attack, her poops were normal.

We do NOT have an avian vet available, so we are looking for things we can do to help her.

 

[Perris]

Hello @abientot , welcome to BYC

That's better out and than in, and hopefully has cleared whatever issue she may have had in her gastrointestinal tract since the fox attack.

If she were mine, I'd just offer her a variety of real foods until I found something she wants to eat, and then keep a very close eye on her. My go-to foods for an under-the-weather bird are small quantities of banana, sardines, mealworms (live, because I grow them), egg, currants/ raisins/ sultanas (whichever you have handy), milk-soaked bread, plain natural yogurt, dog or cat food (wet or dry).

Do please keep us informed of any developments.

 

[abientot]

Thank you, @Perris! She seems to be eating pretty good as long as we add mealworms (otherwise she’s super picky and won’t eat treats like egg, yogurt, or wet cat food like our other chickens gobble up in a nanosecond )

She didn’t poop overnight again, so she has been pooping 1-2 times a day since the attack (10 days ago as of today). They are huge and smelly, but now mostly solid vs. the first few days which were diarrhea.)

It just seems so strange for a non-broody chicken to poop only once or twice a day, so it makes me worried that we are missing something else internally that could be wrong after the Fox attack.

Thanks again for your advice!

 

[Perris]

It just seems so strange for a non-broody chicken to poop only once or twice a day, so it makes me worried that we are missing something else internally that could be wrong after the Fox attack.

it is odd, but then surviving a fox attack is abnormal too. We cannot know what's going on inside our chickens, at least while they're living, and if she's eating well, I would try not to worry. They are amazingly resilient creatures.