Please help my hen!!

aishilemon

In the Brooder
Feb 3, 2017
6
0
10
Massachusetts
My most active hen is showing extremely weird signs, of what I don't know.
She had a lot of fecal matter stuck to her bum (more than normal ahaha) and her comb is drooping over. She has been laying down all day and is not moving away when I approach her, and didn't even show signs of moving away when I cleaned her butt carefully with a hose.

Things that are different today then other days;

The temperature has been up 15 degrees for the past two days.

Things that have not changed:

Food is the same
Chicken mates are the same

Everyone is acting the same except for her, which worries me because she is the most active hen. She does not move from her spot unless I move her, when I pick her up she leans against me and goes limp.

They have water, which I changed earlier today and watched her drink like a horse. They always have access to clean water but maybe she didn't like what she was given?

Any ideas on what's wrong with my New Hampshire red?

Dehydration?
Worms?
 
If the symptoms just came out of nowhere suddenly, maybe she got into or ingested something toxic? Keep her hydrated just in case.
 
How old is she? Did you check her vent? Does she seem like she's having trouble passing an egg?
 
Hello! I hope your hen is doing better. If it's been hot, it may be a heat stroke/heat exhaustion. Be sure she has lots of water available and if you don't have any electrolytes on hand, you can make your own, which will help hydrate her:
For 1 cup water add
2 teaspoons sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
 
Last edited:
does she have a bloated abdomen? egg yolk peritonitis is very common and some of the symptoms you described match it
 
Thank you for everyone that responded! I will make sure to keep everything posted on here for future reference if anyone else turns into this problem.

At the end of the day she was the only one that had not gone inside, and instead was under the coop in the far back corner, and would not move. I physically had to crawl under this tiny coop to try and get her out!! My family and I set up a cage in our bathroom downstairs where the temperature was easier to be regulated and ended up keeping her in for two days.
I took a quick emergency run to the store and got her epsom salt, and then continued to give her a 'spa treatment' that you can only give your hens once a year. I ran a bath slightly warmer than luke warm and put her inside. The point of the bath was to have water up her chest so that she could absorb magnesium through her feathers and skin.
She was in the bath for only 30 minutes, as it would usually last longer. Within five minutes of her in the bath you could hear how horrible her breathing was. She sounded like a stuffed up child that you would hear on an inhaler!! :(
Every few minutes she would start panting like she was in labor and her neck would rock back and forth before curling down... she was trying to sneeze. The problem was the first time she did this I didn't know what she was doing, and the poor girl's head went underwater. She was okay, just shaken up by it. She sneezed multiple times in the bath, but what prompted me to take her out early was when after one of the sneezes she went completely limp, her body stopped moving, and she fell over on her side... she had flat lined. I don't know what happened or what brought her back, but in the middle of me screaming at her and shaking her a small bit she started blinking again and sucked in a huge gulp of air... As you can imagine I took her out right after and spent the next hour drying her off and blow drying her lightly.
To help get some of her energy back we gave her something... interesting to say the least!!! I force fed her some Gatorade so she had an electrolyte in her system and managed to get her to eat some meal worms covered in extra virgin olive oil, something that like spa treatment, should only be used once a year. The extra virgin olive oil's point is to help her insides, mostly her digestive system, even though we knew the problem was respiratory at this point, specifically she had a really bad case of pneumonia.
I'm not going to lie, she should not have survived that night. I don't know how my baby pulled through but she did. In the morning she was doing a bit better. At this point I was up with her at 4 AM till I managed to leave and get duramycin 72-2000 when the stores opened. An injectable medicine for cows, and that could also be dissolved in water for poultry animals. Throughout the day I force fed her 3/4 of a cup of the diluted medicine. I also managed to trick her by soaking some bread with the medicine, and hiding grit, layer pellets, and some meal worms in it. She took the bait.
At this point she still wasn't walking and spent her time laying down in the cage. Every hour I took her out to feed her about one dropper to three medicine droppers of liquid. At the end of the night I saw her stand for the first time in days, and she started cooing every time I entered the room. Something I hadn't heard since I brought her inside. My father also reported to me the next morning, that the hen was snoring when he woke up to get ready for work. She only stayed inside for 2 1/2 days, but that is still long enough alienate her from the flock, as I only have five hens currently.
She was walking around for at least half of a day before I decided it was time for her to go back with the other hens... however, there was something else I noticed. As I started getting ready to take her outside I kept finding small bugs crawling on my arms. My dumb hen had gotten mites too!!! She is the most prone hen in the flock for getting mites, but I hadn't seen them on her in the past few months. Thankfully I had just done my yearly change in my flock's coop so I sprayed it down with poultry protector, and I just ordered some DE, which has always worked on them.
I began treating all the hens for pneumonia to be safe since they were all exposed at once point. So, now I'm changing the water daily, adding the duramycin to it. Only two of the hens beat on my sick baby, but the other two ended up protecting her, so she has managed to get back into the flock quickly, with little conflict.
She was doing really well when I checked her this morning, and I will continue to force feed her a few droppers every day. Since the hens are on antibiotics, any eggs they lay I cook and feed back to them.

Short summary: My hen had a severe case of pneumonia and a minor infestation of mites.

MORE POSTS TO COME WITH PICTURES
 
Glad to hear she is better! You had your hands full nursing her back to health. Good tips on dealing with chicken pnuemonia.
 

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