- Jul 18, 2012
- 14
- 3
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Well this post is going up here for two reasons. One to help those with similar issues and another to see if any knows exactly what this is called.
Young hen, Easter egger recently of laying age always laid ginormous eggs. Way too big for her little body. We adopted her from a friend who was planning to sell her house and didn't want to market her home with an illegal coop. Her hens were very healthy and did well here for several months. This one, Knickers, always had a slightly poopy butt. Extra fluffy, we supposed it was hard to keep clean? Well that's a wrong assupumtion, possibly a mistake. I wish we would have brought her in and cleaned her up to see why this was happening... Maybe we could have helped her then. But she seemed fine so we left her and her poopy butt.
One day I brought them some spent grain- which is like chicken crack to them. All 30+/- chickens were at my feet except Knickers. She was on the roost in the coop - at 3pm? Weird. So I bring her in and inspect her extra poopy butt. She felt meaty and was fairly alert. No one was picking on her...but on further inspection I found a sore under her vent and maggots living there- flystrike. So we plucked all the maggots gave her sea salt baths for a couple days and treated her wound. She lived in the laundry room in a dog kennel. We hand fed her Greek yogurt, chick started mash with bananas. We mixed up electrolytes in her water. Each day she ate less and less her poop went from watery and white to dark green goo in a couple days. Every time we see neon green or dark green poo with a sick chicken- we know its near the end. Even though she was eating she still was pooping bile. Her crop would fill up- from tube feeding but what came out, didn't look right. She still looked starved. That was a second clue. By day 3 of flystrike treatment we noticed a hard lump in her belly area. It was hot to touch. So we gave her tylan 100 injections for 2 days. We have a leghorn who occasionally suffers from "lady problems" where her giant eggs cause inflammation and sometimes infection- we've treated her issues successfully when her belly gets like that- with Tylan. We keep thinking one day she'll kill over laying her huge eggs. But she doesn't seem to miserable except when her belly swells a bit or it gets infected occasionally. I've felt slightly guilty for not culling her but she seems happy and healthy...
Anyways Knickers seemed to be responding to the antibiotics and was taking in more food by the 2nd day. Some of the swelling went down and the flystrike was almost completely healed. Last night she was looking good. This morning she was dead.
Curious, my husband did an autopsy and found her filled with at least 3lbs of "cooked" rotting egg yolks. All of Her organs were pushed in a tiny tennis ball space inside her body. Ultimately the food she ate last night probably did her in, I guess? It wasn't digesting because her intestines were bound up with all the rest of her insides. Sadly she had a likely painful last few days. When I was feeding her last night her eyes seemed to beg me to put her down. I should have.
Any one know what she had? I guess my point of even sharing is for information only. Sometimes it's nice to have a reference of things when a chicken is ill. There were signs from the beginning she was having issues. I'm not sure we could have even saved her...
If any one is curious or for more reference I can post photos of what was inside her.
Young hen, Easter egger recently of laying age always laid ginormous eggs. Way too big for her little body. We adopted her from a friend who was planning to sell her house and didn't want to market her home with an illegal coop. Her hens were very healthy and did well here for several months. This one, Knickers, always had a slightly poopy butt. Extra fluffy, we supposed it was hard to keep clean? Well that's a wrong assupumtion, possibly a mistake. I wish we would have brought her in and cleaned her up to see why this was happening... Maybe we could have helped her then. But she seemed fine so we left her and her poopy butt.
One day I brought them some spent grain- which is like chicken crack to them. All 30+/- chickens were at my feet except Knickers. She was on the roost in the coop - at 3pm? Weird. So I bring her in and inspect her extra poopy butt. She felt meaty and was fairly alert. No one was picking on her...but on further inspection I found a sore under her vent and maggots living there- flystrike. So we plucked all the maggots gave her sea salt baths for a couple days and treated her wound. She lived in the laundry room in a dog kennel. We hand fed her Greek yogurt, chick started mash with bananas. We mixed up electrolytes in her water. Each day she ate less and less her poop went from watery and white to dark green goo in a couple days. Every time we see neon green or dark green poo with a sick chicken- we know its near the end. Even though she was eating she still was pooping bile. Her crop would fill up- from tube feeding but what came out, didn't look right. She still looked starved. That was a second clue. By day 3 of flystrike treatment we noticed a hard lump in her belly area. It was hot to touch. So we gave her tylan 100 injections for 2 days. We have a leghorn who occasionally suffers from "lady problems" where her giant eggs cause inflammation and sometimes infection- we've treated her issues successfully when her belly gets like that- with Tylan. We keep thinking one day she'll kill over laying her huge eggs. But she doesn't seem to miserable except when her belly swells a bit or it gets infected occasionally. I've felt slightly guilty for not culling her but she seems happy and healthy...
Anyways Knickers seemed to be responding to the antibiotics and was taking in more food by the 2nd day. Some of the swelling went down and the flystrike was almost completely healed. Last night she was looking good. This morning she was dead.
Curious, my husband did an autopsy and found her filled with at least 3lbs of "cooked" rotting egg yolks. All of Her organs were pushed in a tiny tennis ball space inside her body. Ultimately the food she ate last night probably did her in, I guess? It wasn't digesting because her intestines were bound up with all the rest of her insides. Sadly she had a likely painful last few days. When I was feeding her last night her eyes seemed to beg me to put her down. I should have.
Any one know what she had? I guess my point of even sharing is for information only. Sometimes it's nice to have a reference of things when a chicken is ill. There were signs from the beginning she was having issues. I'm not sure we could have even saved her...
If any one is curious or for more reference I can post photos of what was inside her.
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