Lethargic chicken, food in mouth.

[walker_chicken_man]

Hello!
First-time chicken owner, I bought four hens a little more than a week ago and have one hen that's not doing well. When she first arrived she was doing well, eating, very alert, seemed pretty normal, but her condition started to worsen after a couple of days. She has been very lethargic for about 5 days, sleeps most of the day, often with her tail feathers and head drooping. At times she will move around and try eating or drinking a bit but it's pretty minimal. Today I pulled her out of the run to take a closer look and I noticed she had feed in her mouth and down the first part of her throat. I checked her crop and it felt empty, I moved her inside my house and gave her some purree vegetables. Oddly enough she is also the only one of four hens that is laying, all should be laying but she is the only one. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, not sure what to do for her.

Thanks

 

[azygous]

Have you tried to remove the "food" from her mouth? Try it. It may not come out. In fact, if it bleeds when you try to scrape the matter out, you are likely dealing with canker, a protozoa infection generally caused by pigeons or other infected birds sharing the same water dish as your chickens. You can treat it with acidified copper sulfate. I would treat the entire flock as it is very contagious.

 

[walker_chicken_man]

Yeah I used a qtip to get some of the food out of her mouth, its definitely her feed, she did spit a little bit of it up after I did that but not much.

 

[azygous]

See if this helps. https://www.backyardchickens.com/ar...w-to-know-which-one-youre-dealing-with.73607/

 

[walker_chicken_man]

Thanks for sending me that post. I read it over, from the guidance given in the post I am not certain that its an issue with her crop. It's not impacted from what I can tell. She is still pretty down today and has pooped a few times but I'm still not sure why she isn't eating much.