Hen with foaming mucus, only from the mouth.

Our Spitzhauben hen, Trixie, came out of the coop this morning pouring (literally! ew!) yellow and white foamy mucus from her beak.
She was fine yesterday. Her chest is barely rattling. Her eyes aren't swollen or watery or bubbly. The mucus has no odor. Her nostrils are clear! She's not even puffed up or sleepy, she's just standing still more so than usual and not eating. I've got her in a box in my back room so she can rest and not spray snot all over the rest of the birds.

I'm more just venting than asking for advice. *sigh* I've had no new chickens at all, not since I got some chicks last March from TSC. None of my other birds have been sick. (I raised them all from chicks.) No one has come onto my property with contaminated shoes, I don't even wear the same shoes to the feed store, and all that careful stuff. The only place it could have come from is a wild bird.



I'm just so frustrated. If you take good care of your chickens and are careful not to expose them to other birds, this shouldn't happen! (But it's impossible to eliminate wild birds unless you keep your poor chickens caged tightly 24/7...)

I got some Tylan, the kind to inject. I'm debating whether to medicate her or not, on the off chance she just has an infection and not a virus. (I had a hen die of pneumonia back in June. I got a necropsy on her. The doctor at the animal diagnostic center said it wasn't contagious and could have been treated with antibiotics. That's the only sick hen I've ever had in my flock.) Trixie is a tame pet and not a breeding hen or anything, so I'm not too concerned about passing on weak chicken genes...but I am concerned about a chicken continuing to shed a virus...tough choice on what to do.

How much Tylan should I give her? 1/4th or 1/2 cc? Once or twice a day? She's a crested bird, so she's not really heavy, but she is a full grown laying hen.

I have given her some ACV and grapefruit seed extract (antiviral/antibacterial) and water in a syringe by dripping it onto the tip of her beak, but I don't know how much she managed to swallow with all the mucus exploding out.

Pray this doesn't spread to my other 40 birds.

 

It's possible she ate something bad, like a toad...but we just got a 10x10 kennel for some of the chickens and she has been locked in it for about a week. I had a dozen chickens who decided that it would be a good idea to roam way way waaaay far from home, and I live in a suburb! Every time I turned around they were off and I had neighbors knocking on my door telling me my chickens were in their yard. So the roaming birds had to go to jail.

I haven't gone to check on her yet this morning. I'm kind of afraid she'll be dead.

 

Ok so I really don't believe this...

I went to check on her and she had eaten all of her food, drank her water mixture too. She's 100% fine! Not a rattle in her chest, no sign that she ever had all that mucus pouring from her beak. We gave her some whole corn and some more water, she gobbled it up and had a big stinky normal poo. Now she's outside in the yard scratching and pecking just like normal.

Perplexing.

Anyway, I'm so glad she's fine! I never gave her the Tylan or anything.