Help!!!

simschickens

Hatching
8 Years
Sep 2, 2011
5
0
7
Southern Utah
I have a Black Star hen that has been standing off to herself for about a week. I picked her up a couple of days ago to check her out and she just laid there, she let me turn her over and didn't even give up a little fight. She has had a pale comb and wattles(At first I thought that it was because of her molt cycle) but now they are even more pale. Today when I picked her up to cleanup her poopy bottom I notice that her skin is yellow now and not a creamy white like it used to be. She seems alot thinner than normal, I don't know if she has been eating because I work and can't watch her all the time. So, I ground up some chicken pellets and some meal worms and "force" fed her with a syringe and she did seem to get some of it. I have 10 hens so I can't tell how her poop looks like other than the pasty dried stuff on her bottom. We don't have a small farm vet in my area so any help you can give me would be greatly appreciated.
I love my Black Beauty and would miss her clucky self.
Thanks,
A Worried Chicken Momma
 
I have a Black Star hen that has been standing off to herself for about a week. I picked her up a couple of days ago to check her out and she just laid there, she let me turn her over and didn't even give up a little fight. She has had a pale comb and wattles(At first I thought that it was because of her molt cycle) but now they are even more pale. Today when I picked her up to cleanup her poopy bottom I notice that her skin is yellow now and not a creamy white like it used to be. She seems alot thinner than normal, I don't know if she has been eating because I work and can't watch her all the time. So, I ground up some chicken pellets and some meal worms and "force" fed her with a syringe and she did seem to get some of it. I have 10 hens so I can't tell how her poop looks like other than the pasty dried stuff on her bottom. We don't have a small farm vet in my area so any help you can give me would be greatly appreciated.
I love my Black Beauty and would miss her clucky self.
Thanks,
A Worried Chicken Momma

There are several things that it could possibly be: Visually inspect her closely for lice/mites, especially around her vent area. Remove feces from her feathers and use scissors to trim fluff as necessary so that she'll have a clear "shot" to the ground when she poops. She also might need to be wormed. It's possible that she could be eggbound or egg impacted. If she's egg impacted, there's not much that can be done. You can soak her in a container of warm water up to her sides. While she's soaking, massage her underside front to rear for about 20 minutes. The warm water will relax her and expand her innards. Massaging her underside will help move the stuck egg along. Hopefully she'll lay an egg. Resoak as necessary.
 
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Your comment about her skin color changing from white to yellow sounds like liver disease. Dawg 53 has very good advice to exam her thoroughly. Eggbound, eggyolk peritonitis, fatty liver disease, and many infections such as chlamydia, avian influenza, fowl cholera, and fungal diseases can cause liver disease. Hopefully she just needs worming. Here are a couple of references: http://www.thepoultrysite.com/diseaseinfo/12/big-liver-and-spleen-disease
http://msucares.com/poultry/feeds/poultry_laying.html
 

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