chickensticks
Hatching
- Jan 24, 2016
- 3
- 0
- 9
Hello all. New member here, long time lurker. I had 30 hens and one rooster. Down to just 25 hens now. Lost the others within the last 2 weeks. The latest one was different symptoms than usual. I took some pics in hopes someone has seen something like this before. I won't bore you with the details of everything, unless anyone is interested lol.
The latest one was a hatchery black star I got from a local chicken guy at about 2-3 weeks old. She is now 20 weeks. 3 days ago she started to act sick. Standing off to the side when j throw scratch out and not really going after it. She also kinda had her head like tucked back. I let her be.
The next day she was just sitting in the coop while the others were out frolicking. I picked her up and gave her a once over. She had evidence of diarrhea on her fluff below her vent, and all her neck feathers on the back of her neck were gone, no evidence of pecking.
Her crop and abdomen felt normal but her right eye was closed. I didn't really worry about that too much because I had seen sick chickens get pecked on because they are acting wierd and j know sometimes their eyes can get scratched. I got her to open it and it looked Normal and there was evidence she could see out of it.
Fast forward to today and she's acting the same. Still see diarrhea, crop was VERY and hard, and she acted mostly ok but tired. Her right eye now looked swollen and had goop in it. But the most worrisome thing was she had a black growth on the back of her neck.
Now..... Other chickens, including this one, that have died all had one symptom (except the 2 that died randomly out of the blue with no apparent symptoms) I can't really seem to find any solid info on.... They all seemed to have a problem with balance if I turned the chicken on one side while holding it. You could see them just do this wierd slow whipping motion with their heads and then if I righted them, and set them down, they were unable to walk for a few minutes. After the few minutes, they were back to how they were before the dizzy spell.
A friend of mine that also raises chickens said it looks to him like its neurological. Sorry for the long post. I'll reply with pics as soon as I can get them uploaded. Thanks!
The latest one was a hatchery black star I got from a local chicken guy at about 2-3 weeks old. She is now 20 weeks. 3 days ago she started to act sick. Standing off to the side when j throw scratch out and not really going after it. She also kinda had her head like tucked back. I let her be.
The next day she was just sitting in the coop while the others were out frolicking. I picked her up and gave her a once over. She had evidence of diarrhea on her fluff below her vent, and all her neck feathers on the back of her neck were gone, no evidence of pecking.
Her crop and abdomen felt normal but her right eye was closed. I didn't really worry about that too much because I had seen sick chickens get pecked on because they are acting wierd and j know sometimes their eyes can get scratched. I got her to open it and it looked Normal and there was evidence she could see out of it.
Fast forward to today and she's acting the same. Still see diarrhea, crop was VERY and hard, and she acted mostly ok but tired. Her right eye now looked swollen and had goop in it. But the most worrisome thing was she had a black growth on the back of her neck.
Now..... Other chickens, including this one, that have died all had one symptom (except the 2 that died randomly out of the blue with no apparent symptoms) I can't really seem to find any solid info on.... They all seemed to have a problem with balance if I turned the chicken on one side while holding it. You could see them just do this wierd slow whipping motion with their heads and then if I righted them, and set them down, they were unable to walk for a few minutes. After the few minutes, they were back to how they were before the dizzy spell.
A friend of mine that also raises chickens said it looks to him like its neurological. Sorry for the long post. I'll reply with pics as soon as I can get them uploaded. Thanks!