hen walking side-ways, please help!

[roxyblue]

awe!
I am so sorry! she might just be to weak to eat/ not interested, you may have to start force feeding her...luckly mine is 100% interested in food and water, she's acting like a normal chicken exept for the fact that she can't walk strait and has weak legs.
Hope all turns out well for both of us
this sounds like something that can be fixed!
Best wishes!
-roxyblue

 

[roxyblue]

update if anyone is interested:
I brought the girls into the mud room for the night. They roosted on the trash can. This morning It seemed like Roxy didn't have much control about where she was going..

I fed them an egg and they are going to stay inside for the rest of the day plus a couple more nights,hopefully she will make some progress. Today i'm getting two more chickens, maybe that will brighten up my day!
-thankyou everyone
-Roxyblue

 

[seminolewind]

I would quarantine them until you know what she has.

 

[roxyblue]

I am......

 

[teach1rusl]

If you're really concerned, you should always isolate a potentially sick bird.
Having said that, it was probably my comment that you read about a week or two ago about their bird having such a hard molt that it was walking sideways. My BR Dixie had a really hard molt this year. As others have described (and you), she would walk sideways, squat as if she was ducking away from something invisible, would stay on the roost (I have a staired plank up to mine, so she was able to get up there okay) later, and wasn't even jumping on treats like scrambled egg (she'd eat it, but wasn't attacking it like usual). But now that all (or most) of her quills are all through the skin, she's vastly improved. I wouldn't even touch the poor girl for over a week, because it was evident she was just so danged miserable. I gave her eggs, tuna, meat scraps as treats for a week straight to help those feathers as much as I could. She still looks mangy right now, but at least the worst of it's over...just waiting for all those feathers to unfurl and grow out a bit more. The ducking, side walking, etc. is done and over.
It sounds like this is what your girl is going through too. She's never done this before, and none of my other girls have either - so this was new for me...

 

[roxyblue]

Thankyou,
When I first began to see this behavior I was pretty frightened,i didn't know molting could do this to a chicken. But now that I have learned more about it (thanks to all of you guys

) I feel much better. It turned out to be a nice day ( in the 50s) so right now her and her sister are walking aroung the backyard like they normally do. She still walks around the entire coop/run to get were she needs to go, but I'll keep my eye on her.
THANKS AGAIN SOOO MUCH EVERYONE!
-roxyblue

 

[seminolewind]

I can't believe how bad a molt could be. One year I thought my hen was dying; pale, skin and bones, avoiding the others, it was awful.

 

[roxyblue]

oh yah.
though my hen is eating just fine and probably weighs more then six pounds.

 

[roxyblue]

morning #4 update:
yesturday evening she could walk a strait line in she tried REALLY hard. she relapsed. This mornign was propably the worst one yet. It hurts her if I pick her up, so I trying to not do that.... but she can't even walk to my hand to eat, she has to zig zag her way to me then totally missis my hand and walks the other direction, It was a nice morning so i put her and her sister in one of the runs. i tried to feed them an egg this morning but Gloria (my other hen) hogged most of it.....I've tried to seperate them but both of them start freaking out, so I don't think thats in option.
Thanks for all of your support everyone,
-Roxyblue

 

[jjthink]

Yeah, she's really having a tough one. Get poultry supplements in her water (e.g. Avia Charge 2000) and just keep at the hand feeding till some good foods find their way in to her. You are doing this, I'm sure, and it will make all the difference. Poor dear. It's such a disconcerting time for them....
JJ