My chicken won't eat!

[sumi]

She may not be able to see the food... I hope I'm wrong! Have you tried letting her eat from your hand?

 

[jodirednose]

Yeah she's not too tame so she won't really eat from a hand. I have waved my hand in her face and she does duck out of the way. I gave her egg today but she just seems to of taken one mouthful then spat it in her food. Not sure whether to keep her alive for much longer. Apart from eating she's doing really well but obviously she has to eat!

 

[kellyor]

I'm having the same problem with one of my hens after a raccoon attack. She managed to get away with what appears to be injuries only to her comb and maybe an eye and lots of feathers gone. At first the eye was closed but now it's open and she seems to be able to see ok when it comes to getting around, although when it comes to eating it seems like she wants to eat and sort of moves for the food but that's it. Even when I hold food out for her she looks at it like she's interested and will even move toward it some but won't or can't take and eat it. She is drinking. She's also pretty lethargic. Just wondering if your chicken ever started eating.

 

[jodirednose]

Hi, I should of given a update. Yes she is fine, her wound has completely healed and the feathers are back, she's laying and everything! What I did with her was fed her scrambled egg every other day for a week, due to work I only fed her in the evening and she prob didn't even eat as much as a teaspoon full. I also got one of those syringes from sainsburys chemist and put in some olive oil and fired that down her throat (it was hard to do it slowly). And then because the egg feeding took a longggg time I switched to yoghurt for the second week of hand feeding using the syringe again. Then left it up to her to live or die and luckily she lived!!! Oh I also put water in the syringe after feeding to give her a drink. The whole time she was in the house in a dog cage. When I put her back out she still didn't seem 100% but I think she was actually a bit depressed because she perked up a lot once she got outside. At one point I did think she might of had impacted crop so I massaged her crop everyday but I'm still not sure if she ever did. I think the throwing around of her neck was due to stress of the fox attack and prob me feeding her and not impacted crop.
Sorry I've really waffled on but I just want you to know everything I did and seemed to work. Please keep me posted on how you get on and good luck!

 

[kellyor]

Thanks for the update! My girl is doing well too! Not sure if it was on this thread or another one, but I got the idea to give her a few drops of Polyvisol infant vitamin drops at least while she wasn't eating much and that really seemed to help. She didn't like it much but it seemed to make her feel better and stimulate her appetite. Overall she is doing much better and is back outside. I'm very relieved as she is my favorite!