Hen salivating, acting listless.

[speckled_egg]

She's a two year old bantam frizzle cochin, and she's been spitting up mouthfuls of frothy saliva, and moving with less than her usual vigor. I just noticed this today, when another of my birds was trying to eat a string of saliva hanging from her mouth. I don't see or feel any other signs of trauma, she is breathing normally, the only slightly unusual thing is that she has some mud on her comb that I wasn't able to scrub off (I didn't try very hard). We do have rats in the area (though we are actively trapping them and the population is currently very small), the run is topless so she's probably had contact with wild birds, and the summer has been unusually cold, foggy and rainy, especially recently. None of my other birds are exhibiting symptoms, but some of the dung in the run is greenish and runny.

I'm keeping her inside with me for now, in a glass tank (I don't have access to a cage with better ventilation). Since she's a frizzle, I often take her inside during the rainy months to blow dry her and make sure she stays healthy. My family is in the middle of moving, so I haven't kept as close an eye on my birds as I usually do, and it's possible she got cold, or ingested something. We don't use rat poison or other toxins in our yard, so I don't know what she could have eaten. I plan to treat her myself, but I'm not sure what to do. In the past, when she's gotten cold from bad weather, I've kept her warm and dry, with access to fresh food and water, and she's pulled through. However, I've never seen a bird salivate like this before, and I worry that it won't be so easily treated.

Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your support.

 

[speckled_egg]

Update: She is no longer salivating. Her crop isn't filled up and I haven't seen her eat, but her crop has food and liquid in it, and she has access to steel cut oats and fresh water. Her dung is firm and healthy-looking. She's behaving normally. I should probably clarify that I noticed her salivating about three hours ago, but was showing the house and was only able to isolate her, make her comfortable and let her rest, not observe her the way I wanted to. I checked on her periodically, but was unable to sit with her and properly assess the situation until just recently. When I had a moment, I quickly typed up the above post. She appears to be doing fine, but I still don't know what caused her to salivate, nor how to treat it.

 

[Chickengal505]

Is her crop full of water? it so you will have to emty it out by holding her head down stetching out her neck holding her by her legs and massage her crop area and she will vomit the fluid and that should clear it up

 

[speckled_egg]

Thanks! I'll try that. Do you know what might have caused that? Just drinking too much? Not an illness?

 

[Chickengal505]

Mostly its just taking in to much water at one time somtimes its worse than that but it sounds like she just drank to much and there was no room in her crop for all the water she had drank so it over flowed into the crawl (neck area) and when she tried to bawk or chook or what ever they do it was comming back out she should be just fine (knock on wood)