so_fancy_af
Chirping
TL;DR: my special needs chicken isn’t eating after a bout of coccidiosis and mite flare-up, nor had she laid an egg in a week. What to do?
long version: My girl Mystery has had a rough few months. She’s partially blind to begin with so it’s always been tough for her. She survived the fox bite of early summer—thank you to all who provided help and reassurance!—and then came down with coccidiosis. I caught it pretty quickly, quarantined her, cleaned the coop, put corid in everyone’s water, and direct dosed Mystery as well. Another thank you to all the brilliant voices on various coccidiosis threads. Fortunately, after three days Mystery seemed to come back to herself. She was eating and drinking and lost that super sad hunched over look. Then, I’m guessing because she was feeling so low, not grooming or dust bathing, there was an explosion of mites. It was so bad that when I even touched Mystery’s pen, I’d have them crawling all over my hands and arms. I got some liquid permethrin, mixed up a batch for premises spray and treated her pen, then diluted it and sprayed her butt. Permethrin nuked everything, thank goodness. Seems like the other girls and coop escaped the mite explosion, though I cleaned it again anyway. So yesterday afternoon after making sure she was good to go I put Mystery back in the run. Normally she would eat like crazy as soon as she saw the feed hanger, but she didn’t really pay attention, which I thought was odd. She’s noticeably skinny after this past week, which makes sense. She was also still getting picked on, which isn’t surprising (but sad and hard to watch) because she’s always been the bottom of the pecking order. After having her out for a couple hours and watching how much energy she was expending trying to stay out of everyone else’s way, I decided to pull her back out and try to get her to eat a bit. She didn’t touch any food last night and this morning she isn’t interested either. I put in a whole dish of scratch and she pecked at it once. She also hasn’t laid an egg since she got sick, which was exactly a week ago today (Monday Sept. 27). I’m going to try making her some mash and also maybe scramble her some egg, though it’ll have to wait a big because I have to go to work. Is this a normal response to so much stress and various chemical substances or indicative of an additional underlying issue? Should I be worrying about other horrific problems that could follow, like necrotising enteritis? Are there foods that are particularly good for post-corid, post-permethrin recovery? Thank you in advance for your help! I’ll be reading up on egg bind during my lunch break.
long version: My girl Mystery has had a rough few months. She’s partially blind to begin with so it’s always been tough for her. She survived the fox bite of early summer—thank you to all who provided help and reassurance!—and then came down with coccidiosis. I caught it pretty quickly, quarantined her, cleaned the coop, put corid in everyone’s water, and direct dosed Mystery as well. Another thank you to all the brilliant voices on various coccidiosis threads. Fortunately, after three days Mystery seemed to come back to herself. She was eating and drinking and lost that super sad hunched over look. Then, I’m guessing because she was feeling so low, not grooming or dust bathing, there was an explosion of mites. It was so bad that when I even touched Mystery’s pen, I’d have them crawling all over my hands and arms. I got some liquid permethrin, mixed up a batch for premises spray and treated her pen, then diluted it and sprayed her butt. Permethrin nuked everything, thank goodness. Seems like the other girls and coop escaped the mite explosion, though I cleaned it again anyway. So yesterday afternoon after making sure she was good to go I put Mystery back in the run. Normally she would eat like crazy as soon as she saw the feed hanger, but she didn’t really pay attention, which I thought was odd. She’s noticeably skinny after this past week, which makes sense. She was also still getting picked on, which isn’t surprising (but sad and hard to watch) because she’s always been the bottom of the pecking order. After having her out for a couple hours and watching how much energy she was expending trying to stay out of everyone else’s way, I decided to pull her back out and try to get her to eat a bit. She didn’t touch any food last night and this morning she isn’t interested either. I put in a whole dish of scratch and she pecked at it once. She also hasn’t laid an egg since she got sick, which was exactly a week ago today (Monday Sept. 27). I’m going to try making her some mash and also maybe scramble her some egg, though it’ll have to wait a big because I have to go to work. Is this a normal response to so much stress and various chemical substances or indicative of an additional underlying issue? Should I be worrying about other horrific problems that could follow, like necrotising enteritis? Are there foods that are particularly good for post-corid, post-permethrin recovery? Thank you in advance for your help! I’ll be reading up on egg bind during my lunch break.
