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My injured girl is still doing pretty well, I let her out with the other girls during my lunch break for a few minutes so they won't "forget" her. She seems to be alert and interested in food. Tonight I will use some Tea Tree Oil diluted on her wounds to further halt infection. She also struggled and tried to get away when I picked her up today, which I also take as a very good sign.

Along those lines.... Anybody have a RIR for sale? :D
 
i never thought that it would be like having 4 children when i decided to raise chickens. let them out to free range for a while-they only free range when i am out with them.after a while they got tired of it and went back into the pen. i locked the pen and they started chasing each other trying to get something out of each other's beaks. the only way to find out what they were fighting over was to let them out of the penn again. cornered the hen with the object to find they were fighting over a glob of caulking. NOT SURE IF THEY WOULD EAT IT BUT BOY DID THEY ALL WANT IT.
 
LOL. I'm glad nobody ate it since it turned out to be a string of caulk, but they likely all thought it was a worm or something. My ducks do something similar when they get a worm or slug. Out of our eleven ducks, it's almost always our little Khaki hen that finds it. It's easy for us to tell she's found a "prize" because she wastes no time breaking from the rest of the flock and running in the opposite direction as fast as her little feet will carry her. Of course all the others go running after her to try to steal her worm, then it becomes like a bunch of kids playing tag. She zigs and zags and ducks and dodges for as long as it takes her to consume her prize (sometimes a slug). If she gets surrounded, she takes to the air and flies over her pursuers, which gives her a big advantage since she's the only one of them that can really fly. Once she finishes her snack on the run, she just suddenly stops and looks at all the rest of them like "What?" then strolls over to get a drink of water to wash it down.

Have you been raising chickens for long? I think poultry are so much fun, every bit as much as dogs and cats, just in a different way.
 
Just cross-posted in the Emergencies/illnesses forum :(

One of our ~14 week old chickens has been acting lethargic and just standing or laying a lot today. We just lost a chick last week to wry neck and I'm kicking myself for not questioning her health when I first thought something might be off (maybe we could have saved her?).

I can't 'see' anything wrong, the chickens have free access to grower feed and water and the occasional veggie scraps, she just isn't running around with the other chickens and doesn't seem interested in eating or drinking. I opened up the run to give them access to a fresh patch of yarn and a garden bed, but she's just resting under the coop (where I can't reach her, of course). This is the first I've noticed her not acting completely normal and active.

I mixed up some Sav-a-Chick electrolyte water and put a separate dish out in the run so they wouldn't need to go up into the coop to drink, but she didn't come for any. I got a dropper and had my 3yo go under the coop to bring her out... she didn't peck at the dropper like usual but she did drink a tiny bit that dripped on her beak before escaping back under the coop.

She is the smallest of her group (and has been since she was a little 5 week old chick)... am I looking at failure to thrive? Could there be something else going on? These are our first chickens and I really don't know much about chicken illnesses yet.

What can I do for her? Should I separate her? I have a little dog crate I could keep her in. Force feed her more Sav-a-Chick? Give her something else? A scrambled egg?

Please help! I don't want to lose another one!
 
tpolinsk said:
i never thought that it would be like having 4 children when i decided to raise chickens. let them out to free range for a while-they only free range when i am out with them.after a while they got tired of it and went back into the pen. i locked the pen and they started chasing each other trying to get something out of each other's beaks. the only way to find out what they were fighting over was to let them out of the penn again. cornered the hen with the object to find they were fighting over a glob of caulking. NOT SURE IF THEY WOULD EAT IT BUT BOY DID THEY ALL WANT IT.
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They are so funny when they do that! One of our favorite things to do is give them a slice of soft bread. One will pick it up and try to run, but then the bread rips and drops and someone else tries to pick it. This happens several times. Hilarious!
 
barbiegirl said:
I call that chicken football! Very entertaining :)
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That's it! I'm not a football fan, so I didn't make that connection, but that's definitely a better analogy. It's like Noelle is the quarterback, except everyone but her is on the offensive side, and it's a touchdown if she manages to eat the worm/slug before somebody else gets it. She even has a cheering squad if we're outside and see it happen. We're usually yelling the whole time things like, "Go, Noelle, go. Right! Go right! Fly, fly, fly!"
 
My poor little injured hen. Today she had a poop with round worms in it. I checked the rest of the flock's poops and they showed no signs. Should I treat her now while she is healing, or wait a week or two until she is better?
 

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