Hen has three shell-less eggs over three days, not eating, very subdued

[Nonny]

As the title says, Tuppence has laid three 'eggs' now over three days that have just been a pile of loose egg white and a tiny bit of yolk, as well a bit of fecal matter. They have all had some, but not much, blood. Yesterday's "egg" seemed to have the shell membrane passed separately, but the other two had no membrane at all.

Her poop is watery and thin, her comb and wattles are still a nice bright red, but her comb is floppy and she's very subdued and not coming out of the coop. Her vent looks OK - I didn't inspect it fully, but just moving the feathers out the way and gently pulling on the feathers to open the vent a little showed that it was clean, moist and pale. Her breathing is fine, eyes are fine and no nasal discharge. I tried to tempt her with some oatmeal but she didn't even look at it.

Can anyone help me figure out what to do? I have some antibiotics here in the cupboard (Baytril Oral 25mg/ml) - should I start her on them? Any other treatment ideas that might help?

It's difficult to isolate her as I only have one other hen her age/size and the second coop has my young chickens in it (8 wks old) so to isolate her would mean my other hen would be also be isolated. (Of course if it looks viral I guess I can figure out a way to separate them both).

She's a 1yr old Black Australorp/ISA brown hybrid.

Sorry - my camera batteries died so I can't get pics.

 

[Nonny]

Oh dear... I got a dose of Baytril into her and she just lay there the whole time with her eyes closed. I also trickled some water into her beak from a syringe and she didn't even react, or swallow. Her breathing is slow and deep, but she's completely floppy and when she opened her eyes she acted very dizzy/confused for a few seconds before closing them and laying there as flat to my knees as she could get with her wings just hanging at her sides.

I've locked her in the coop with some fresh water and clean bedding (so the other hen can't go in there and disturb her), but I fully expect she won't make it through the day.

 

[Nonny]

RIP Tuppence.

 

[ahunt1976]

Very sorry for your loss. Have you dewormed your hens or checked for mites/lice? I lost my most beautiful hen a couple weeks ago. She died out of nowhere and I couldn't understand why but now I beleive mites were the cause of death because we checked her rooster for them and he is badly infested. My hen had bright green poop unlike yours. She stopped eating and drinking and was lethargic and died the next day after I found her in that condition.She didn't show any signs of being sick until the day before she died. I think yours might have worms. Check all of the chickens for mites and lice as well. Do it when it's dark. Mites are little bugs and can be seen around the vent area moving around. Dust and deworm them. There's some good threads on this site about deworming. They say you shouldn't use anything containing albendazole the first time you deworm them because if they are badly infested the dead protein will get stuck and kill them. I think I read that it's better to use wazine 17 and also give them some plain sugar free yoghurt mixed with apple sauce and crumbs and stuff to get all the dead worms out of their system and let their intestants recover faster with good new bacteria.

 

[Nonny]

Thanks for the reply. I've never heard of lice or worms causing internal laying, and I worm and check for lice every few months. (She did have a few lice under her wings when I checked, but certainly not an infestation).

I suspect she died of an infection caused by the internal laying. She used to quite often skip a day's laying and give us a huge egg the next day (one was 101 grams and looked like two separate half-eggs joined in the middle!), so I'm guessing she had something amiss in the laying department for some time.

 

[Suzie]

I am so very sorry for the loss of Tuppence - my thoughts are with you at this difficult time... I have no idea as to what caused her to die - sometimes these awful events happen for reasons we will never understand.

Suzie