- Jan 23, 2014
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I have an 8 month old buff orphington named Skippy. . She is one of eleven in a mixed flock. She is the smallest of the lot and she has always had something going on with her leg. She skips when she runs. In early December I noticed she was not acting quite right. She was not as active as normal and not very enthusiastic about eating. After a couple of days she stopped coming out of the hen house when I opened the door in the morning to let them all out. I brought her inside, put a heat lamp on her and tried to find a vet in my area. I could not find a vet so I researched forums online and decided that based on her symptoms she could have either a vitamin deficiency (leg issue) or worms (thread worms). I added organic layer pellets to the entire flock to go along with the organic mixed grains I was already feeding. Based on research I decided to worm first with wazine and then with safeguard. I put her back with the other hens. This was rough because she was only away from them for about 36 hours and they were very vicious to her by pecking and pulling her feathers. I spent almost a half a day in the pen so they could get used to her again. Anyway, she just kept getting weaker and weaker. she was not eating or drinking. I admit at this point I should have ended her misery but I am new to this and could just not give up on her. Around Christmas it turned really cold and I got worried for her so I brought her back in and was hand feeding her pedialite. She only took 2 tsp a day. In the two weeks between the wazine and sageguard I bought a pro biotic for birds and dosed her three different times. She seemed to improve some and even ate a bit of cucumber one day. After the safeguard worming she did not improve like I thought she should so I gave her a 20 minute bath in Epson salts. This was on Thursday. By Monday of this week I decided she had had enough and was prepared to put her down. I came home from work and she was drinking water on her on and had scratched around in her crate. I took her outside and let her free range with the other hens and she lasted for an hour. I have been taking her out every night and she normally on lasted 5 or ten minutes. So an hour was good. I thought she was better and she does act better. She is scratching in her crate and moving the grain around. She is drinking. But she still sleeps a lot with her head under her wing. My husband says I have to move her back outside. I know the hens will give her a fit and most likely peck her to death. She is still weak and weighs less than a loaf of bread. Tell me what to do.
and Welcome To BYC! Sorry about your hen, hope she recovers.
