Lethargic after laying an egg.

[bluegiantsc]

My hen just hatched out 12 chicks 4 weeks ago. Today she laid her first egg since going broody and now she seems totally lethargic and she's just standing there with her eyes closed, sort of squatting.
She is almost 2 years old, she's been eating dumore chick starter and then purina chick grower for the passed 4 weeks. I've been thinking about putting her back on the laying mash for the calcium, but I just haven't yet. I'll do that tonight. I just didn't expect her to start laying so spot on with it being a month after her chicks hatched.

My question is, do they get really tired after laying their first egg, especially if they haven't been eating an as calcium rich food?
She doesn't appear to have any symptoms of anything else. Her comb is still a nice red color, no nasal drainage, no poop on her bum. Other than just standing there with her eyes closed she looks fine.
I think I'll add some electrolytes to the water, but should I separate her from the flock?

 

[jtakacs]

I have a similar situation... no answers?

 

[casportpony]

I noticed fatigue in some of my turkeys right after laying... You could try giving a human calcium pill and see if that helps?

Kathy

 

[bluegiantsc]

I think what happened to my girl was a calcium deficiency. So what I did was, I made up a pitcher of Save-a-chick, a gallon of it. I crushed up some human calcium tablets and put it in the save-a-chick, then I put a tube of bene-bac in there, I think a vitamin D tablet crushed up went in there too. I stirred it up really good and gave her that for a solid week. I changed it out daily and also kept her in a small dog kennel so she wouldn't get loose on me and go lay down somewhere where I couldn't find her.
She would sit on my lap for 30 minutes at a time and I would syringe feed some of the save-a-chick mix into her beak. After a week of just the save-a-chick mix, pellets with oyster shells, she started to perk up. So I gave her a smaller bowl of save-a-chick mix and a big bowl of water with her food. After about 2 weeks, she started to act normal again. Within the month she was laying eggs again.

I also stopped feeding them Dumor, and started feeding them Purina laying pellets. With a side of oyster shells. Or a handful of oyster shells mixed into the feed so the chickens didn't over load on the oyster shell.

I hope that helps. I'm sure its not the way that everyone would handle that, but its what I had on hand at the time and it did help.

 

[bluegiantsc]

I should have also added earlier, that I treated the whole flock for mites, just in case.
I dusted them with mite powder from TSC. And I also put a big pile of DE in their coop to dust bathe in.

I treated the hen for mites as well, in addition to the save-a-chick mixture.