Lame leg and bad eye- Hen :(

[avenjen]

Hi everyone!

I have had 2 hens for a couple of years now. I used to have a rooster as well, but he was killed by a predator about 2 months ago.. the 'girls' were lost without him for a long time.

Anyway, the smaller of the 2 hens, who always acted as if she was a chick around the rooster (burrowing under him, etc).. has experienced some health deterioration as of recent...


She has not been able to walk on both legs for about a week and a half now.. Here is a picture of her leg..

She has always had a bad eye, but it appears to have gotten worse.. here's a photo of that.

They are garden chickens, who I feed scratch grains along with table scraps such as eggshells and bread. Their conditions are very clean and they don't have any contact with other birds.

Is there anything I can do to help either of her situations? The leg is incredibly sore to the touch... another problem I have is that the bigger hen occasionally goes up to her and pecks now that she is ill...

Thanks for any and all help!

 

[CarriBrown]

Seperate her from the rest of the birds, first off. I'm not the best when it comes to diagnosing chicken problems... so hopefully somebody who has seen that before can give you some advice!
Who knows if the other chickens can catch it, and you don't want her getting picked on. She'll probably feel much better away from everyone where she can lay down and rest her foot without everyone else picking on her.
It almost looks like an allergic reaction... Is she eating and drinking?

 

[avenjen]

She has been eating and drinking, but not as much as usual.

At night, since I don't have a coup, I have always carried the girls in to my garage (I have a separate cage for each).. so she gets a pretty decent rest every night.

I have been out enjoying the beautiful day today and the white hen has been leaving her alone (I think she knows better as I have yelled at her for pecking) while I have kept an eye out..

However, I think tomorrow I will cage off a separate area for Blackberry to avoid any contact since I won't be home as much. I feel so terrible for her, she hops around on the one leg now and then but mostly just nests and pecks at bugs here and there while she is out enjoying the weather during the day!

Thank you for responding so fast! I am trying to think if I have introduced anything new in their diet recently and nothing is coming to mind...

 

[Wes in Tx]

For one thing if all you are feeding is scratch grains and table scraps they aren't getting a very good diet.

The eye thing looks to be sometype of infection. I would get some terramycin eye ointment to use in it. The leg deal is hard to tell. She could have injured it some how or it could be caused by one of several disease.

To treat her I would keep her in the cage 24/7. Add vitamins to her water along with plain aspirin at the rate of 5 5-grain per gallon of water. It it is just and injury this should help her out a bunch and it will take a couple weeks for her to come around.

 

[avenjen]

Thanks so much.. I will do just that- and let you know how it works out!

What else do I need to add to their diet for it to be adequate normally? I generally throw out a wild variety of things for them to snack on, and there is some vegetation in the garden..

 

[Barnyard Dawg]

I agree with Wes the bread and chicken scratch doesn’t sound very nutritious. My wife will feed our chickens steamed rice from the rice cooker with some DE added to it she says this keeps the chickens from having to much fat. She will get mad at me if I feed them scratch saying too much fat, we actually feed them very little grain. We will also add raw apple cider vinegar cider to their drinking water to kill bacteria and is like a health tonic. We will occasionally cut up some green leafy vegetables for them and dig up worms for them, when we do they produce lots of eggs with a deep orange yolk. Also don’t forget the oyster shell for strong bones especially if they are layers since the deplete so much calcium during this process.

 

[CarriBrown]

I was going to mention the diet but I really didn't feel like I knew enough to bring it up.

Use scratch grains as a treat only. It is like candy to them and it would be like feeding your family chocolate for breakfast, lunch and dinner. A tablespoon per bird is more than enough to treat them. I'll give it to mine every other day or so and cut it out in the summer (it is a hot feed).
Get them on a diet of lay mash or pellets. I like the pellets because there is less mess and waste. They probably get enough dirt and grit for digestion, but a little oyster shell never hurt anyone.
You can also feed them the bread like you have been, along with cooked egg (don't want them to figure out that their eggs taste good raw... you'll end up with egg eaters), lunch meat, pasta, rice, veggies, fruit (not citrus, I hear), grass, weeds, and even cooked chicken.
Keep her in the cage until she improves. It will keep the other birds out of her treated water and keep her off her feet. You could probably get her to eat more by feeding her some canned cat food.
Let us know how she does!

 

[avenjen]

Thanks again for all of the advice! I had no idea I was feeding my chickens so much 'junk food' haha... I'm glad I found this site!

I do often throw out veggies to them (I hate carrots and peas so I pick them out of everything I eat.. no I'm not 10.. 25! HA) and salad mix (you know how when you buy one of those bags, it never keeps that long so I end up sharing it with the birds)... They have grass and weeds in the garden...

As far as the oyster shells- I had read somewhere on the 'net back when I first got the chickens that egg shells were a good substitute for them? However, I trust you guys way more then some random site that I can't even remember anymore! Ha... They have laid wonderful eggs though.. very yellow yolks... and VERY tasty!

I will definitely also buy them mash or pellets when I head to Rural King tomorrow to look for the eye ointment... Also.. how awesome that chickens like canned cat food.. I have plenty of that on hand!

OH...where can I buy this apple cider vinegar? I live in Southern Illinois so I don't have a whole lot of shopping choices and I don't remember ever seeing it anywhere, although I haven't really looked either, ha... There ARE some orchards though.. is that where I should look?

 

[SpottedCrow]

You can find the Apple Cider vinegar at a place like Whole Foods.
Definitely no more scratch, except for once in a blue moon. In the first picture, you can see her keelbone...so she needs to get some weight on her.
Doesn't look like she has an infection in her foot, so it maybe something structural, like she pulled a muscle or something of that nature.
I'd wash out her eye with a saline solution and see if you can see anything like a piece of grass or hay or something in it...

Good luck with her.

 

[Barnyard Dawg]

Make sure you buy raw un-pasteurized apple cider vinegar with the mother, which is the sediment at the bottom of the bottle. It is cheap you can buy it at Whole Foods or a natural food store.
http://www.bragg.com/products/applecidervinegar.html