I found my livestock guardian dog laying down next to a chicken today, he has never shown any aggression towards my chickens and I'm pretty sure he had brought it back up for me to "take care of" as he was just doing his protection watch and had no feathers around him. And when I picked her up he was very happy I had finally noticed what he had been guarding and never attempted to bite at her while I carried her up to the garage. My hen is missing a good number of feathers on her back/tail like a dog would do but has no puncture wounds on her, she was very cold and wet (my grass is wet but I imagine dog drool of being carried up was the cause of the wetness). The only dogs I know of around here are next door and I've never had them come onto my property, I don't know if my hen decided to take a walk over and got attacked but my Sam would go after anything he thought was his and bring it back. Or she might of been picked up by a predator bird. Anyways the poor thing was in horrible shock, floppy, cold, pale, and eyes closed. I got her under a heat lamp, given her some nutri drench, checked her everywhere for any broken bones and have not found any, nor like I said any punctures. She has passed a little clear liquid and some white poop without green. Her color has gotten a lot better on her comb (back to bright pink), but she is just in the nesting position and not moving. She is still a little cool to the touch and I have her baking at around 82 degrees in her cage and shaking anytime I get near her. She is not eating or drinking. I've been really lucky as I've never had an attacked animal before, sadly seems today I'm missing about 5 chickens and I just can't see them all crawling over the fence which is a good long distance away. I can't find any signs of an attack spot and I've crawled all over 6 acres around my place. So I'm wondering if I'm missing anything and if I should start this gal on some antibiotics? I figure if anything she has internal injuries and only time will tell. My chickens have also just lost their free range benefits as well! Thanks for listening!
I can't really help but I hope she is going to feel better. Maybe some electrolytes might help her out.
I forgot to put that in original post that we put electrolytes in the water. She seems to be doing better tonight, she crawled away from the heat lamp, produced a normal poo, and then decided to give me a really nasty soft shell egg! I have my garage light on and I don't know if that is what caused her to lay or if stress did it. These gals are so bossy that I can't tell if she can move yet other then to scoot as I tried getting her to move over and she just looked at me like "are you crazy I like this spot". I couldn't tell if she has tried eating or drinking yet as when she did move over she of course moved the water over and the dumped the food out of the feeder.
