Last night one of our Dominique girls (they were hatched the week of April 7th) was limping and dragging a wing, didn't want to eat only to drink. I couldn't see any sign of injury when I checked her over, her eyes looked fine and she wasn't rasping or making other odd noises when breathing. This morning I went down to check and she is way worse, won't walk at all very lethargic and her crop is hard as rock. One eye is swollen shut but the other looks normal (I think the coop mates may have pecked her in the swollen eye).
I have her in isolation now in our garage in a separate pen with water but no food.
Could this be Mareks or could it be an impacted crop? We live in the boonies and I know that the closest chickens to us are over a mile away. All of the chickens we have now were hatched in my classroom by me and brought to my house to be raised when they were about a week old, we've never taken any of our flock to a fair and we haven't been to visit anyone with chickens - so if it is Mareks where did it come from?
Is there anything I can do to help her?
The hatch she is from was a particularly frustrating one as we got 3 dozen eggs and ended up with 18 getting to lock down - the others were not even fertile with no development at all when I opened the clear eggs. Of those 18 about 12 hatched and when I opened and checked out the eggs that did not hatch the chicks that did not hatch had a lot of what seemed to be deformities and malpositions. I've never had such bad luck with a hatch and nothing was different from any other hatch (I use a brinsea advanced octogon 20 in my classroom). Then two of the Dominique hens that hatched died the first week from some sort of weird eye weepy thing where their eyes got all gunked up and they just stopped eating and drinking no matter what I did to help them. So if I can save her I would love to, if we lose her we only got one Dominique hen from this hatch and that is the breed we wanted the most (we also hatched polish and blue cochin this year).
I have her in isolation now in our garage in a separate pen with water but no food.
Could this be Mareks or could it be an impacted crop? We live in the boonies and I know that the closest chickens to us are over a mile away. All of the chickens we have now were hatched in my classroom by me and brought to my house to be raised when they were about a week old, we've never taken any of our flock to a fair and we haven't been to visit anyone with chickens - so if it is Mareks where did it come from?
Is there anything I can do to help her?
The hatch she is from was a particularly frustrating one as we got 3 dozen eggs and ended up with 18 getting to lock down - the others were not even fertile with no development at all when I opened the clear eggs. Of those 18 about 12 hatched and when I opened and checked out the eggs that did not hatch the chicks that did not hatch had a lot of what seemed to be deformities and malpositions. I've never had such bad luck with a hatch and nothing was different from any other hatch (I use a brinsea advanced octogon 20 in my classroom). Then two of the Dominique hens that hatched died the first week from some sort of weird eye weepy thing where their eyes got all gunked up and they just stopped eating and drinking no matter what I did to help them. So if I can save her I would love to, if we lose her we only got one Dominique hen from this hatch and that is the breed we wanted the most (we also hatched polish and blue cochin this year).
