Lethargic chicken, doesn't open one eye. Help please!

[Liz]

Our hybrid chicken is quite old. She is about 3 years now, and hasn't laid eggs for a year. We had been lead to believe that this was to be expected for her breed, when we bought her. She has been adopting a tail down sad posture for about a month now, and we assumed she was just aging. But, the last couple of days, she is only opening one eye, and if she jumps wrong out of the pop hole, she falls, and then struggles to get up. Oh, I forgot to say that she is doing a sort of gaping thing with her head

So, assuming gape worms, I have begun worming the chickens, using flubenvet.

However, she is not a well lady, and we are very sad, as she is the only remaining of our original chickens. I am not sure if the kindest thing would be to have her put down, but I don't want to do that if she could make a recovery.


Oh to be back at the days she would stand on my son's shoulder like a little pirate parrot.

If anyone has any ideas, please suggest away.
Thanks

 

[faykokoWV]

can you isolate her so you can see her poo, who much she is eating and how much she is drinking. I don't know if chickens have strokes but it seems like an older chicken could have something wrong along those lines. Hopefully someone with more illness experience will respond.

 

[Liz]

Thanks for replying - I thought I'd said something wrong, as no-one was talking to me!

She is certainly eating plenty of layers pellets, and drinking happily. I'm not sure about poo. I ought to look into that one tomorrow. We are in the UK, so she's gone to bed already. Well, she didn't actually, I had to put her there, but she's tucked up for another night. Maybe she'll live to see another day...

 

[faykokoWV]

Don't ever worry if you don't get a reply, sometimes people just miss a post. I have a habit of search for unanswered posts to see what's out there.

I would look at isolating her from the rest of the flock, just incase it is something contagious. has there been any other changes to your flock recently.

 

[Liz]

thanks for your advice. I haven't done it till now, because we have only got a rabbit run thing to put her in, and it has no nesting area for overnight. Plus, she has just been going downhill slowly for a long time, and the others seem fine. It's only the last couple of days that she hasn't been opening her eye.
I think I'll look in to it tomorrow.
Thanks