How can my pullet be starving to death?

[Kittymomma]

Quote:
I like cheese in mine too.

Actually shredded cheese is another thing I give my girls for a treat once in awhile. The soaked cat food sounds good too. At this point anything that is relatively good for her and she'll eat is progress. If there's no underlying problem she should recover quickly with a warm place and plenty of food. 4-h chicken mom was right on with the suggestion of a second feeder. It would probably be a good idea to do that however it ends up with this hen. A couple of bullies in the flock can make it really hard on the lower ranking pullets.

 

[Plain Old Dee]

He's already been out to the junk pile for more "stuff." We made our feeder for mash out of a piece of old (unused) pvc sewer pipe. It was cheap since it was already in the junk pile. He'll have the second one finished in the morning.

I just hope the "bubbling" is from the water in her naires and not URI again. Most of the other hens recovered from the URI pretty quickly - even one I was convinced was going to die - she was gasping desparately for every breath one night. By morning, she was breathing a bit better and within a week was symptom free. She was older, though. About two years old or so.

I guess I'll go to bed, and hope she's better in the morning. At this point, I'll settle for just still being alive!

 

[dlhunicorn]

catfood and dogfood are really not the thing to give birds... much less sick birds (TOO much salt for one thing and the vitamin ratios to each other are all wrong) hard cheese types also have too much salt (birds are very sensitive to salt)
If you want to up the protein then a cooked hard boiled egg is the way to go .
When birds are that ill they are not drinking sufficiently and you need to put electrolytes in their water. You can get some baby parrot/bird formula (this is a powder you mix with water) and mix that thru their feed to concentrate the nutrition > you can buy this at a pet store or order online.
If you cant get that then you can cook up some human oatmeal (in water NOT milk) and mix that thru their feed (most luv this) and mix a general poultry supplemental vitamin with it or if you do not have the supplement then use a childrens A-B-D vitamin (Polyvisol enfamil without extra iron)>three or four drops in beak per day.
Offer some live culture unflavored yogurt free choice.

 

[Plain Old Dee]

Well, she's still alive this morning - but just barely. She won't eat at all. She drank a swallow of water. I wanted to try to get more in her by dripping it on her beak, but she just sat there. She did poop for me - a perfectly normal looking poop - not runny or green - well formed brown poop with white on top. Guess this means the digestive system is working okay, but she's still very lethargic. Last night she seemed so determined to try to live. Not so much this morning. The only thing good I can say is that when I bumped her (by accident - I was cleaning up the poop) and knocked her over, she jumped right back up. Hopefully, she's just still waking up - she was in an interior bathroom and I had only just turned the light on. I have the light on and the heater going now. It's not cold in there, but I thought maybe a little boost would help.

Last night in the henhouse, she kept trying to snuggle up to whichever larger hen was closest to her. They weren't having any of it. I felt so bad for her...

Am I doing the right thing, or should I have just let her go last night. Moral questions - don't you love them?

 

[Plain Old Dee]

Well, we lost her this morning. Her poop looked normal, but I guess she was just too weak. I'm going to have to teach DH to watch a little closer, and I'm going to have to do the same. He's going to build a new feeder to put in the henhouse - they'll both be about 3 feet long, so there should be plenty of room for all withouth much fuss. I think it wasn't just not eating that got her though. She never did quit wheezing, so I guess my URI wasn't quite all gone like I thought...

 

[Kittymomma]

I'm sorry.