Hen emergency!

[tennis97]

Help, one of my chickens is extremely sick. She has been getting picked on, and when I noticed her being picked on I picked her up and she started drooling profusely. It was clear and thick. I'm very worried, I love my chickens like children and I want to help her. Any suggestions?

 

[Pyxis]

Sometimes they drool like that if they've just been drinking and you put pressure on their crop, which forces it back up. It looks like a lot of clear thick drool. Could that possibly be what happened?

 

[tennis97]

Well it's crop seems pretty large, and it is acting weird. Very quite and it closes its eyes and shakes its head gently. I isolated it and gave it food and water, it is drinking quite a bit.

 

[tennis97]

*quiet

 

[tennis97]

I also noticed she has completely liquid, fairly clear poop

 

[Pyxis]

The completely clear poop could be because the others were bullying her away from food and she hasn't been able to eat. I would give her some apple cider vinegar in her water if you have it, and maybe scramble an egg or two for her to eat. I'm wondering if the clear poop might actually be vent gleet, which is caused by an imbalance in the digestive tract, so you may also want to give her some plain yogurt with probiotics and see if that helps. Is it having any other symptoms, like coughing, sneezing, weezing, nasal discharge, watery eyes, gaping etc or is just the weakness and the odd poop and drool?

 

[tennis97]

I tried massaging her crop and she vomited up more water. She keeps sucking it down. I noticed labored breathing, squeaking, and closing her eyes a lot. She did open her mouth a lot ager vomiting. Could it be an impacted crop? Will do with the vinegar, eggs, and yogurt!

 

[Pyxis]

Does the crop feel solid and hard? That's what it would feel like if it was impacted. The labored breathing, gaping, and squeaking could point to a respiratory problem. If it was a lot of gaping, I'd say gapeworm but that's pretty rare and if she was only gaping after vomiting that's probably not it. You might want to start her on some respiratory medicine in case it is a respiratory disease - is she a new chicken? Have you introduced any new birds lately? The stress of being picked on and bullied could have caused a flare up in any respiratory disease she was carrying, or if you got new chickens they could have introduced it to her.