Second hen showing signs of lethargy...

[CaptainSamH]

Great vet, really knowledgeable, reasonable price. She's on the low weight side and fecal test will be in tomorrow. And then she pooped this on their floor...

 

[CaptainSamH]

Ok, got slowed down a bit because of Halloween, but also watching Amber (the affected pulley in question) who seems to be doing a little better. Here's the update for y'alls consideration. Results from vet indicate no coccidosis, which is good news, but...we now don't know what is wrong. Prior to the rest results coming back, the vet advised getting some chick food - that's higher in protein - to help bulk her back up, so i mixed up a concoction of chick food, probiotic & electrolyte powder and yogurt and she gobbled it up two days in a row. The vet did give me some antibiotics for her, but I didn't manage to get it in time to give her before they were sacked out in the coop. Then today she seemed a lot more alert and eating more, and less hunching with closed eyes and tail feathers down, which is saying something because it was cold and crazy windy today. So I haven't actually given her any antibiotic yet and would love some advice on how to proceed... the vet said we cannot eat her eggs once she gets the meds (I don't think she's laid any lately, anyway, but...), so we either need some way to tell which are hers (if she starts laying again) or quarantine her. But my questions are this:

if we quarantine her in a dog crate so the flock can still see her, does she stay in there 24-7? The antibiotics are 2 weeks and then we can't eat the eggs for months (?)...thats a long time in a crate, or a substantial coop refit for her to have her own space/run. Or at some point, with winter coming, will they all stop laying? Also, am I kidding myself that she's doing better and being irresponsible by not dosing her asap? Sorry about the epic post, but my newbie brain is just going out in a million directions...

 

[CaptainSamH]

And...as if that wasn't enough...we don't actually know what's wrong and there other weird stuff going down, like:
I found another collapsed egg today, it looked small and the nesting box was gooey with you.
I may have one or two broody hens (Well, one is still a pullet), sitting on either their egg or another's, my other amberlink was hanging out on two brown eggs this am, and not in a nesting box.
It may be worth saying that the coop has had some changes recently and the aforementioned amberlink and the TOR have been nesting in a corner on some bedding behind a bale of straw.
Also worth saying - and possibly the cause of the sickness (?) - was an event that affected the household and the coop...my youngest daughter had a fairly serious injury to her foot involving the ER, several nights at the hospital and 3 weeks of missed school in which I functioned as mom and nurse. The upshot is the the coop got neglected, and while we weren't looking the chickens took to pooping on one set of nesting boxes that's not in plain view from the door and water. I noticed after a couple weeks, but there was a lot of poop, so I just took the whole thing down. In the meantime the chickens that weren't laying on the clean nesting boxes had gotten used to laying on some clean straw bedding in a corner of the floor. If our sick girl Amber was laying, we'd have 6 layers and still have 3 nesting boxes. They have a small birch tree trunk for a roosting bar and when i cloaed them in tonight, 6 of the 7 (this past April's chicks) were sleeping there with the older RIR ( the only one left from the original flock we got a year ago) chilling in one of the nesting boxes.
Ok, I think that's all for now...I would welcome any thoughts on any of this melange of chicken brouhaha. Until then I will be snuggled up with Gail Damerow. Thanks!

 

[CaptainSamH]

Forgot to mention - though it is another thread - that we had a couple days with a white-ringed egg then the indented egg (beautifully explained by a BC member in that other thread). I found both them in the corner under the amberlink, but they were brown...so wouldn't have been hers, right?