Hen vomiting now, help please?

[SeaChick]

Karri-
What we did for penny: put her in a dog crate with newspaper underneath. That way I could see the poop easily and there was nothing fiibrous she could eat. I just checked every hour or so and pulled the top few sheets of poopy newspaper out.

For water... I worried Penny wasn't drinking much also, althouhg perhaps she was getting enough from her soft/moistened food I was feeding. But to get her to drink the vitamin water I used an eye dropper and just dribbled it along the side of her beak (while I held her) and she would drink a little that way.

My Avia Charge just came today and it looks like aweome stuff. Lots of kelp, fish oil, and lactobaccilus. i put it in their water and the water looks all brown and fishy now, wonder if they will drink it?

GOOD LUCK- we are thinking of you!
Stacey

 

[karri25]

Thank you so much! I wish I had ordered aviacharge!!!! I will as soon as I can afford it. I did get vitamins at the feed store that look pretty good (no fish oil or kelp though). I cooked some beef liver and mashed that up in cooked oatmeal, yogurt, acv, and I added the vitamins. It might be a little much with the acv and the vitamins but I made a call and decided to give both. I figured that if I or my children were sick I wouldn't stop taking vitamins b/c of a medicine. I want to hear your oppinions on this mixture. If she has passed that by this morning than I will also mix into it some of her feed softened. She did finally poo a real watery poo last night.

 

[karri25]

OK, I have one question.
I know not to feed any food until the crop is empty. Her crop has gone down since I fed her last night but it's still water-filled feeling. Do I feed her or do I wait until it clears out all of the way? Yesterday all that she ate was the 2 1/2 teaspoons of oatmeal/liver/yogurt/vitamin mixture. I am so scared that she will lose too many nutrients.

 

[Windy Ridge]

Hmm... I just don't know. It should have emptied (more or less) over night. Still, you say it has gone down, so obviously she's still moving food through there. It must not be impacted. If it is yeast, it could just be that the yeast is, well... rising and making the crop feel fuller. I'm just guessing.

Diana is really our resident expert; I hope she sees this. I'm with you, though, in thinking that she should eat something, especially if she ate so little yesterday.

Sea Chick, how is Penny doing?

 

[karri25]

I tried to pm her but her inbox is full

I think I am going to feed her at least 2 tspns just to keep up her energy. I will feed her "the mixture." It has tons of good stuff for her. I hope by tonight that her crop is less mushy:|

 

[Barnyard Dawg]

"...some birds are experiencing symptoms of vitamin deficiencies/excesses, recurring infections, digestive disturbances, stress-related disorders, or have developed organ damage and subsequently a shorter life-span." Our birds' bodies are adapted to fresh raw foods, such as fruits, vegetable matter, nuts, seeds, sprouts, berries, leaf buds, pollen, nectar, insects, larvae, and small vertebrae. When it comes to manufactured diets, not only are these products primarily made-up of fragmented substances and isolated, synthetic vitamins and inorganic minerals, most do not contain important elements like enzymes, chlorophyll, and other natural beneficial substances which are found in natural foods. There isn't a commercial food product or nutritional supplement available that can provide our birds with the outstanding goodness that is to be found in Mother Nature's garden. Eating foods, which are naturally produced can offer our birds, and ourselves, the ultimate opportunity to achieve vibrant and long- lasting health.

 

[Windy Ridge]

Actually, Barnyard, that reminds me of what a friend of mine does for his chicks. He picks various edible greens--grasses, clover, dandelion, chickweed, etc.--and blends it into water then strains it. The water is green, naturally, from the chlorophyll. Various other natural healthy substances, he thinks (and it makes sense to me!), are left in the water for the babies. Like grass juice, diluted, I guess

. He calls it "green drink." Obviously, you have to change the water often, but you do that, anyway, for chicks because they're so messy and generally drink so fast.

I actually drink green drink, too. My husband doesn't like the taste, but I think it's yummy. Of course, you can't have treated your lawn. Now I sort of have to go further afield for the plants because there is chicken poo in the immediate area.

 

[karri25]

There are tons of things that you can make teas out of that are sooo good for you! My kids love pine needle tea and clover tea. I don't give them much clover though b/c it relaxes you and I'm not sure how much my kids need. I always try to steer them away from teas thta have strong effects.

Anyhow Barnyard Dawg, I do give my girls commercially prepared foods. I also give them pumpkins, squash, meat, small ammounts of whole wheat breads, fruit, nuts, tomatoes, and even tons of herbs. Half of my garden this year was planted for them. I try to keep it balanced out. I also throw all of my grass clippings and such into their yard. My hens are given tons of healthy foods. I have never had any problems until two weeks ago when everyone went haywire. By everyone I mean 3 birds, two of which were given to me in a very degraded condition to begin with. The only thing that I can think of that changed around that time, with exception to the fact that I got the two new birds, is that I started feeding scratch at night to help keep the birds warm.
Could scratch help cause candida? My friend feeds hers scratch all of the time and she never has problems. But that's the only major change I can think of. I stopped feeding it to them when this hen got sick in the first place so I don't know????

 

[Windy Ridge]

Scratch and so forth shouldn't be a problem, fed in reasonable quantities, unless they don't have access to grit. It's good to have a varied diet.

The grass clippings, however... greens are really good for them, of course, but any clippings you give, just in case you don't know, should be cut to very small lengths. When chickens graze naturally, they nip off small lengths of grass, usually the tips. If they get lots of clippings from a mower or something, that can sometimes cause problems with an impacted crop because the clippings can get bound up into a sort of indigestible ball, and the mass doesn't pass easily into the gizzard to be ground up and digested.

You may be able to do a search on here for "impacted crop" or even "grass clippings" for more information. If her crop isn't going completely down, you may recognize someone else's description of similar symptoms...? Or you may read the symptoms and think: "Whew! Glad that's not us!"

If she can eat and poop and her crop is going down between meals, though, that's a good sign.

Edited to add: Clippings from a mulching mower are usually pretty small, but it depends on the mower.

 

[karri25]

OK, now I'm really worried. I went outside to check on my other girls. When I came back inside my sick one had escaped and pooed on my floor. Thank goodness for hardwood! But, it was all water with real green parts in it. Is that the bile that I've read about? If it is, is it b/c of what I've been feeding her, her crop, or the fact that she almost didn't eat yesterday???

I am almost 100% certain she has candida. Her crop does not have anything in it that I can feel except the watery stuff. When I cleared her out yesterday she had watery, broken down food and that was all. I saw no hay, sticks, etc that would seem like it would be part of a ball-thing that was clogging her up. And since she seems to b e"fermenting" I think that it is candida. Of course, I have no degree in vet science so I may be wrong. I just want her to get better and I am hoping that it is only the yeast as I cannot afford to take her to the vet and I cannot perform surgery on anything.

P.s. thanks for the info, the grass clippings that we give them are very short But there have been times when our grass was very long and I threw it on the compost pil einstead for that very reason! Glad to know that I was right about it