Hey, sorry to resurrect an old thread everyone, but this topic's been on my mind because of my poor 11 month old BO, Henrietta.
She's very very thin. The vet weighed her a couple of days ago and she is 2 kilos. As a LF BO, she should of course be nearer 4 kilos.
She's got a six week old chick, but was broody for seven weeks before hatching. She didn't like to leave the nest often to eat and drink, and even largely ignored food and water once I put the bowls within reach of the nest. The final straw for her was a very severe red mite attack during the last week of the brood, whereby she got very anaemic and completely stopped eating. We spotted that very quickly and tackled the mites ferociously, and by the time the chick was three days old they were gone, and Henrietta was on high-dose iron supplements. Her comb quickly went back to a nice reddish-pink and the bleeding from her nostrils stopped. She began to eat small amounts of treats again quite quickly.
She's now very active, looking to all intents and purposes very healthy (flapping and exercising her wings a lot, charging up and down the garden, looking really full of energy!), and still mothering the chick extremely well, but not putting on any weight. She's eating, but only when I nag her, and only the choicest treats and clover. All the bugs and worms she catches go to the chick, and when it is eating, she simply stands guard over it. She eats so very little herself. Our vet has put her on Tylan soluble, just in case she's having an underlying recurrence of her mycoplasma (she got very thin when she first had a bout of it five months ago), and some heavy duty vitamins to give her a boost, but three days later and she's not eating any better, so I'm inclined to think it is simply her strong mothering instinct, not a symptom of an illness. (She is also moulting, which isn't helping, as everything she does eat is going into producing new feathers.)
I desperately want her to kick the chick out now, but I'm scared she'll keep going with it indefinitely. It's looking like it is a hen, so we'll be keeping it, so it's not possible to separate them. She and her chick live happily in the main coop with our other hen, Bella, who also mothers it and catches bugs for it. I don't want to have to give it away in order to save Henrietta's life, but if that's what it takes, I will.
I'm also concerned that Bella is getting very overweight with all these treats I'm throwing into the coop to tempt Henrietta to eat, and of course, I couldn't bear it if she got ill too. She weighs a ton when you pick her up, and her eggs are starting to get very large from the richness of the diet we're offering. I don't want her to have a prolapse from laying very large eggs and being too fat. I also don't want to separate her from them, as it seems Bella is the only thing that encourages Henrietta to do anything other than stand over the chick looking worried and watching for predators. When Bella forages, Henrietta forages; when she runs around the garden, Henrietta runs around the garden. But when Bella is inside the coop laying an egg, Henrietta goes back to standing over the chick looking worried again.
It's all just a terrible mess that I can't seem to solve.
Would Henrietta get even more upset and pine for the chick if we removed it? Could that be the final straw? Or might it work?
And this weight issue likely to be simply down to mothering, or should I continue with my vet's suggestion that Henrietta is actually ill? She doesn't behave ill, just disinterested in food. I'm so worried about her
