FoxChickens
In the Brooder
- Mar 20, 2022
- 4
- 1
- 12
I apologize in advance how long this post is but I want to be sure to include all info of the situation. My hen Dolly is a rhode island red and is three years old. Dolly has been sick for about 3 months now. It started when her best friend which was a barred rock named Percy got taken by what we assume was a hawk. While we have other chickens they were very close because I raised them together and literally never left each others side. If one wondered away the other one would start screaming until it came back. Obviously I knew Percy’s death would take a toll on her however for the first few days after her death she acted pretty normal. Until about 3 days after Percy's death she layed down in the dog house and wouldn’t come out. I didn’t think much of it and brought her out to a sunny part of the yard and she pecked around for a while like normal. But when I came back outside later she was back in the dog house. This was very odd to me because she was the most active chicken I had and constantly would run around the yard. I immediately started googling her symptoms. She was kinda puffed up and seemed to be trying to lay an egg? She layed an egg the day her friend died but hadn’t layed one since so she hadn’t layed an egg in about 3-4 days. This was also very odd because she usually layed an egg everyday and it was spring as well. I came to the conclusion she might have been egg bound and gave her an epsom soak and loaded her up with calcium. I dried her off and put her in a dog kennel in my room and hoped for the best. However her condition remained the same for about a week. At this point I knew she couldn’t have been egg bound because she would have died by that point. She wouldn’t stand up for very long periods of time although her legs worked just fine and she could walk if she wanted too. Every time I would stand her up she would just lay back down. I had to hold food and water up to her beak for her to take any of it. For a while I was mushing up her food into a past and syringe feeding her. Eventually she started eating and drinking on her own but still wouldn’t stand for very long. But over about two weeks she started to become more active and would start to stand up and walk around more. Eventually when I would put her outside she would walk around and scavenge. She didn’t go completely back to her old self and I would still find her laying in the dog house from time to time, but she was pretty much recovered. She went back to acting mostly like a normal chicken. She didn’t seem to have the same “spark” that she had before but I expected that after Percy’s death. Still she didn’t go back to laying. She stayed this way for a little bit until I noticed her walking strange. She had a little bit of a waddle to her. One day I picked her up and noticed her belly was pretty swollen. Then I started thinking it might have been egg peritonitis. Since she had a swollen belly and hadn’t layed an egg in over a month. Then she started getting more lethargic. She would act pretty normal for a couple hours and then find a corner or the garage and stand still with her tail pointing down and go to sleep. She would do this a couple times a day but act normal the rest of the day. Then she started having some trouble running and walking. However this would switch off and on. Some days she would come wobbling out of the coop and run around the yard just fine and the next she seemed to be unbalanced and have difficulty walking even a few feet. Sometimes this would even fluctuate throughout the day. We took her to the vet and she thought the lethargy may have been because of a respiratory infection and she was shaking her head. I think this was just a coincidence because I hadn’t seen her shaking her head before we got to the vet and she didn’t after we left. She also said the swollen stomach may be caused by heart failure. She said we could x ray her but she wouldn’t recommend it cause it was expensive and if it was heart failure there was nothing the could do to help. They sent us home with some antibiotics and I added it to her water. This did seem to help with the lethargy and she seemed much more aware and alert. However she started physically declining after this. I noticed that when she would try to jump up onto the roost she would tumble back down even though it was only about 2 feet off the ground.(before she got sick she loved to jump up on things and could easily jump up onto things about 5 feet or higher.) I started to put her up on the roost and I would have to set an early alarm to come help her down in the morning because she couldn’t on her own. It got to a point where she couldn’t even get up off the ground on her own and I would have to help her get up any time she wanted to move or eat or drink. The same weird thing kept happening though. Every once in a while I would come open the chicken coop and she would be waddling around.(not well but still a big difference from not being able to even stand on her own.) yesterday my sister found her laying in the grass with ants on her and she couldn’t get up on her own. So we decided to bring her inside for the foreseeable future and she is now in a laundry hamper with a towel and puppy pads. I’ve freaked myself out a little bit as I’ve come across some of the Mareks symptoms which are leg and wing paralysis. However it doesn’t seem like they are truly paralyzed. She does let her wings hang a bit, but she can still move her legs and wings and can feel when I touch them. I do have doubts that this is what it is since she’s been “sick” for about two months with all sorts of different symptoms and during all of that she has been exposed to all my other chickens and all of them are very active and healthy so I don’t think it’s something contagious but I could be wrong. I have a suspicion that the reason she is having trouble walking is because of her swollen stomach?? Maybe it’s putting a lot of pressure on her body or something and causing some of the symptoms. Im thinking of taking her to the vet again and seeing if they can drain her abdomen and see if that helps. I know sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t depending on what the underlying problem is. I’ve considered getting her put down but it’s hard because as I said she is very alert to her surroundings and she is still eating and drinking like normal and doesn’t seem to be “suffering”. I would just hate to put her down only for it to have been something treatable you know? However if she does get worse or it turns out to be something untreated I will probably put her down. I know the vet said it may be heart failure, but the only thing she based that off of was the swollen abdomen which could be a hundred other things and we didn’t get the x rays either so we couldn’t really confirm. Another “chicken expert” told me she was just depressed and another told me she’s dehydrated. I highly doubt both of these and I’m just so lost on what the problem could be. However at this point the thing I’m leaning most toward is some sort of vitamin deficiency? That still doesn’t explain the swollen stomach though… I will probably go pick up some poultry cell as well as some other supplements and see if that helps. I’ve been giving her a choice between layer feed and chick feed with some oyster shells in a separate container ever since she stopped laying and as far as I’ve seen she will only eat the chick feed and refuses to eat the layer or the oyster shells. Also Percy died march 11 and that's when all the problems started she also hasn’t laid a single egg since that day.
I attached pics of her as well as her droppings below to help identify what the problem could be.
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!
I attached pics of her as well as her droppings below to help identify what the problem could be.
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!
