My pet four year old hen has been ill for a while now. About a week ago she had yellow, watery diarrhea and she wasn't eating so i brought her inside and discovered she had sour crop. I made her vomit the stuff out (I've done it many times now) and nothing has changed to this day. I have discovered she is losing weight rapidly (she basically feels like a bag of bones) since she doesn't eat much but she sometimes eats bugs when I take her outside, although that is basically the only circumstance where she eats by herself. Now her crop is much smaller but she still refuses to eat, although she is drinking. I made a thread about her before but now I know the problem can't be sour crop so I've made a new one because I'm completely clueless. I can't take her to a vet as there aren't any avian vets anywhere in my area or even hours away from here. Please help my sick hen, I'm afraid she might die of starvation if I can't help her soon.
I would tube feed her. There are a bunch of videos and posts out there, so I won't go into the how-to's, but here's what I would have available:
1. Kaytee exact Hand feeding Baby bird formula - powder, sold at
Petsmart
2. Puppy feeding tube - this is a tube that will fit on the edge of a FEEDER syringe, which is the kind that has the tapered, pointy tip, not the smaller one made for needles. Usually
PetSmart has them, your local feed store might too- or you can order from Jeffers or valley Vet
3. Couple of FEEDER 35ml syringes-- some like the 60mls, but frankly, I have pretty big hands and can never get the plunger to go down with one hand. If you have a helper, maybe, but a 35ml is much more manageable if you're doing it by yourself
4. Molasses
5. Poultridrench AND a 1ml syringe - makes it easy to draw the right dose straight from the bottle- pouring that stuff is really messy.
6. Warm water.
It will take some experimentation, but the mix needs to be able to go out the puppy feeding tube holes with ease. Once you've got the consistency right, then suck it up through the syringe (easier than pouring it into the syringe). Wait until you've got the right consistency before you add the poultridrench (see back of bottle) and I usually add about 2ml of molasses.
It's a little nerve wracking the first couple of times - but as you wrote, if she doesn't get nutrition, she's going to die- so don't be afraid!!!
