Hen suddenly very sick. Chalky white/yellow discharge, bad smelling vent. Other details provided, please help

[azygous]

You can return her to the flock. It would give her a lift in spirits which can affect recovery in a positive way. You can rotate the cockerels and hens being out, you know. This is how I do it in my flock. The roosters do not have to have unlimited access to annoying the hens.

My two roosters get the most time out since the hens are all done with freedom in about one hour. Then the boys get to roam around, and then they spend most of the time watching "hen TV" spying on the girls through the sides of their run. I haven't had to pay for any psychological counseling yet.

 

[TropicalChickies]

The roosters do not have to have unlimited access to annoying the hens.

Haha...good point . The year old rooster is maturing and very good with the hens, but the 7 month old can be pretty annoying -- treating all day at invisible things on the ground, desperate for a date!

I don't have a run or big enough contained area to hold more than one chicken. Rusty's in a 3x4 mobile pen. The only predators here are aerial ones, so their coop doesn't even close. They just have free reign to enter and leave at will. This is really free range scenario -- big land, remote, closest neighbor is 3 km away. I do have a broody coop that is secure enough to keep little chicks inside in bad weather, but it's in use by broodies. I probably should build some sort of larger area to contain them for occasions like this, though... I really should.

Maybe I'll put the 7mo cockerel in the pen (if I can catch him) and let Dusty out. Or just let her out this afternoon when the males are relaxed and see how it goes. Either way, I think you're right and some natural socializing will be good for her. Now that I don't have to dose her with antibiotic every 6 hrs, she can go where she wants and I don't have to worry about not being able to find her at dose time -- that's the main reason I had her contained besides being threat of contagion.

 

[azygous]

Cockerels and roosters do not need a large space as long as they have hen TV. When I first started with chickens, I had two roosters that wanted to kill each other. So I built a little "vestibule" outside the run so one rooster could be out and still have shelter while the other was inside. They swapped day to day. While the outside roo could go roam at will, he spent most of his time in the vestibule watching the hens.

Everyone who keeps a flock should have a pen to isolate a chicken for any number of reasons. I've used my small sectioned off pen to rehabilitate a bullied hen, for a sick or injured chicken to recover, to raise baby chicks, and for rooster visits. I used it this morning to feed a hen in hard molt who has lost her appetite and will to compete for food to be fed separately. It really comes in handy.

 

[ManueB]

Tell us how it goes. It sounds good.
When i’m not sure about reintegration, I give it a try an hour or two before roost time. If it goes wrong it doesn't last long and I can use the night to separate again the bird before he or she wakes up in the morning.

 

[TropicalChickies]

Cockerels and roosters do not need a large space as long as they have hen TV. When I first started with chickens, I had two roosters that wanted to kill each other. So I built a little "vestibule" outside the run so one rooster could be out and still have shelter while the other was inside. They swapped day to day. While the outside roo could go roam at will, he spent most of his time in the vestibule watching the hens.

Everyone who keeps a flock should have a pen to isolate a chicken for any number of reasons. I've used my small sectioned off pen to rehabilitate a bullied hen, for a sick or injured chicken to recover, to raise baby chicks, and for rooster visits. I used it this morning to feed a hen in hard molt who has lost her appetite and will to compete for food to be fed separately. It really comes in handy.

The pen Rusty has been in is 3 feet by 4 feet by 4 feet. It's open on the bottom so she can be on natural ground. She can stand up and move around and I can move it to different areas so she can be visited by her flockmates, take dustbaths, peck grit, etc. It's fine for short term confinement or for a really infirm chicken, but yeah, I do need something bigger to keep ambulatory chickens that could use more space.

So today I made a semi-circle about 9 feet by 4 feet with some mid-weight pvc screen material and posts in an area that has a mix of sun and shade and shares the roof with the plant nursery. I'll work on something more sturdy, but this should be enough for her for now. I'm going to need to keep monitoring and treating her because now the crop is definitely sour and she's feeling it. It's full and gooshy and giving off a sweet yeasty smell. Her comb is down and she has a pinched expression on her little face.

She's still moving food through and pooping, but slowly.

I started her on acidified copper sulfate in water and she drank about half a cup of it this afternoon. If I put a little apple cider vinegar in the water it masks the copper taste and she drinks it. Hopefully that'll help. I also have Clotrimazole on hand, but I've had better results with ACS in the past so I'm trying that first.

 

[TropicalChickies]

Tell us how it goes. It sounds good.
When i’m not sure about reintegration, I give it a try an hour or two before roost time. If it goes wrong it doesn't last long and I can use the night to separate again the bird before he or she wakes up in the morning.

That's a good plan, and actually what I was thinking about doing just that until I checked on her a few hours ago and found that her crop has really gone sour. So now she needs treatment for that, poor girl. She's uncomfortable, but still pretty perky for a sick hen, and is showing a will to live, so hopefully the sour crop is just a side effect of the antibiotics and I can help her get through it.

 

[ManueB]

I hope it won't come as insensitive if I take the opportunity to ask a rather basic question.
I haven't been able to find out how acidified copper sulfate translates to french, and so to find out if it's sold here. Do you know if it's just copper sulfate mixed with citric acid or is there some kind of chemical reaction involved ?
(Clotrimazole only comes with a prescription here. I’d like to have something in my emergency kit in case sour crop happens, rather than have to wait for days ordering it from abroad when it does.)

 

[TropicalChickies]

Hi, it's not an insensitive question at all, but I just don't have anywhere near enough knowledge of chemistry to answer.

I googled " What is the difference between copper sulfate and acidified copper sulfate?"

If you Google the same question, you might find an article that helps you learn more.

What I learned is,

Another word of acidified copper sulfate is pentahydrate.

The main difference is that acidified copper sulfate (pentahydrate) has had something done to it to remove the water molecules and make it crystalline in form. The advantages are that it is more stable and stays dissolved in water.

https://chemistry.stackexchange.com...sulfate-and-copper-sulfate-pentahydrate#60595

I'm not sure if you can make ferrous copper sulfate stay dissolved in water by adding citric acid or vinegar, but some articles seem to indicate that's possible. But really, chemistry is not my area -- at all -- and I'm not qualified to contribute much here, if anything.

I hope it won't come as insensitive if I take the opportunity to ask a rather basic question.
I haven't been able to find out how acidified copper sulfate translates to french, and so to find out if it's sold here. Do you know if it's just copper sulfate mixed with citric acid or is there some kind of chemical reaction involved ?
(Clotrimazole only comes with a prescription here. I’d like to have something in my emergency kit in case sour crop happens, rather than have to wait for days ordering it from abroad when it does.)

 

[TropicalChickies]

I hope it won't come as insensitive if I take the opportunity to ask a rather basic question.
I haven't been able to find out how acidified copper sulfate translates to french, and so to find out if it's sold here. Do you know if it's just copper sulfate mixed with citric acid or is there some kind of chemical reaction involved ?
(Clotrimazole only comes with a prescription here. I’d like to have something in my emergency kit in case sour crop happens, rather than have to wait for days ordering it from abroad when it does.)

Or see if you can get Micozanole instead. It's often sold without prescription as a cream and/or suppository for vaginal yeast infections and can also help with your crop!

 

[TropicalChickies]

Well, Rusty is worse this morning with a big watery crop and very uncomfortable. She's not gurgling and there's no liquid coming up through her beak, but it's full-on sour crop now. I carefully syringed her 15ml of ACS water to get some into her this morning. She was docile with the syringe -- not a good sign, she's usually more resistant so I know she's feeling pretty badly.

I treated a hen who had a complete recovery from sour crop, so I'm not hopeless. I just hope that whatever happened to her to cause the infection didn't also trigger internal laying...

Her face gets red flushes throughout the day, like she's about to lay an egg. But she doesn't. So I guess internal laying is possible at this point.

It's really a surprise (not in a good way) that this is happening to her. Of all my hens, she's the last one I would have thought -- she's laid nothing but perfect eggs since she started laying at 7 mos old. Not a single soft shell or wrinkled or fairy egg. Nothing that would lead to this. And no one else is sick. You just never know I suppose.