Hen paralyzed, random outbursts of movement. Won't eat by itself. Help!

[idioticfuse]

Two days ago, my 15-week old hen was completely fine in the morning. A few hours later, we found it by itself near some flowers, not moving. We found no external injuries, and kept it in the house in a box. It couldn't move its legs, wings, neck, and mouth, so we had to pry its mouth open to force feed it some water. Every few minutes or so(especially when it receives outside stimuli such as us touching it) the hen would suddenly jump around, then return to its previous state. This is happening less and less. As I only have 3 hens, I'd really like to save this one. What should I do?

 

[chooks4life]

Hello and

This sounds like toxicity to me. Maybe a spider or snake bite, maybe ate a poisonous bug, maybe ate poisonous plants. What sort of plant or flowers are they? I'd take a sample, leaves and stem and flowers, for identification if you don't know. Some plants have specific antidotes.

I'd get activated charcoal slurry into her, just mix plain activated charcoal powder with water and give her about a tablespoonful or a few, as well as about 1000mg of vitamin C (vit C first then wait about 30 minutes before giving charcoal, as the charcoal will absorb everything and nullify any vit C that's not digested) and probably get her to a vet ASAP, to be honest, that sounds severe.

Best wishes.