I’m not necessarily suggesting antibiotic use, but wanted you to be aware of it as a possibility. I would like for @azygous to comment here, if she’s available.
Severely Underweight Hen
- Thread starter Aryetheral Waalburgus
- Start date
A long term partial impaction would make her lose weight and that would prevent her from laying and cause most of the other symptoms.
Feel her crop when she goes to bed, remove the feeder and then check her first thing in the morning. Compare to other healthy hens if you are unsure, but important to check it at night first so you know she went to bed with a full or partially full crop. It should be empty and flat the next morning.
If she has a crop impaction then giving her an oral antibiotic will not help and may make things worse.
Can you post a photo of her and explain where the abdominal swelling is and what it feels like and what size it is. ie gold ball, baseball, soft ball etc. Also, what does her poop look like? Is she soiling herself ie poopy butt feathers. What breed is she?
Feel her crop when she goes to bed, remove the feeder and then check her first thing in the morning. Compare to other healthy hens if you are unsure, but important to check it at night first so you know she went to bed with a full or partially full crop. It should be empty and flat the next morning.
If she has a crop impaction then giving her an oral antibiotic will not help and may make things worse.
Can you post a photo of her and explain where the abdominal swelling is and what it feels like and what size it is. ie gold ball, baseball, soft ball etc. Also, what does her poop look like? Is she soiling herself ie poopy butt feathers. What breed is she?
- Thread starter
- #13
- Jun 10, 2017
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So it's 6:00pm EST my time, and I just checked her crop. It's slightly full. My other three hens had double as much food in their crops as her. I'll lock them in the coop in an hour, remove the feeder, and check her again in the morning.
She has no abdominal swelling, or any swelling at all.
She has very low muscle mass. Very skinny and weighs 3lbs 12oz.
She is a Production Red (red sex link).
Stool appears normal (not wet, dry, too small, etc.), but she is soiling herself. I had to give her a bath today to clean the poop off her butt feathers. She is sitting on the floor to sleep, which may be why she's soiling herself, as the poop cannot fall to the floor.
Here are some pictures. In the ones with the yellow chicken, it is for comparison. She is the red chicken. If you need a specific picture, please tell me.
She has no abdominal swelling, or any swelling at all.
She has very low muscle mass. Very skinny and weighs 3lbs 12oz.
She is a Production Red (red sex link).
Stool appears normal (not wet, dry, too small, etc.), but she is soiling herself. I had to give her a bath today to clean the poop off her butt feathers. She is sitting on the floor to sleep, which may be why she's soiling herself, as the poop cannot fall to the floor.
Here are some pictures. In the ones with the yellow chicken, it is for comparison. She is the red chicken. If you need a specific picture, please tell me.
I'm sorry I misread your post about her symptoms and thought you reported that there was abdominal swelling.
Soiling themselves usually indicates some abdominal swelling either between the legs or just below the vent, but it may just be that she is sitting in her own poop with not roosting.
Her crop does look pretty large and I see that they have access to a lot of grass, so it may be a grass impaction. This is where blades of grass become ravelled up together in the crop to form a tangled mass which is too big to pass down into the gizzard where it would be broken up and too large to be vomited back up, so it sits in the crop acting like a filter plug or sieve, allowing fluids and fine particulate food to pass through but clogging up with larger particles. This means that they do not get enough nutrition to maintain their body weight and they slowly start to lose weight as they burn off their body reserves. Sometimes regular massage will break it down or a stool softener can be used but occasionally surgery is necessary.
Obviously, if her crop is completely empty in the morning then that is not the problem. A vet can check a faecal sample for worm eggs rather than risk giving her an unnecessary wormer which may do more harm than good to a sick bird. They are usually able to spot an overgrowth of coccidia in the same faecal testing process. It should not be an expensive test, here in the UK it costs £10-£15.
Soiling themselves usually indicates some abdominal swelling either between the legs or just below the vent, but it may just be that she is sitting in her own poop with not roosting.
Her crop does look pretty large and I see that they have access to a lot of grass, so it may be a grass impaction. This is where blades of grass become ravelled up together in the crop to form a tangled mass which is too big to pass down into the gizzard where it would be broken up and too large to be vomited back up, so it sits in the crop acting like a filter plug or sieve, allowing fluids and fine particulate food to pass through but clogging up with larger particles. This means that they do not get enough nutrition to maintain their body weight and they slowly start to lose weight as they burn off their body reserves. Sometimes regular massage will break it down or a stool softener can be used but occasionally surgery is necessary.
Obviously, if her crop is completely empty in the morning then that is not the problem. A vet can check a faecal sample for worm eggs rather than risk giving her an unnecessary wormer which may do more harm than good to a sick bird. They are usually able to spot an overgrowth of coccidia in the same faecal testing process. It should not be an expensive test, here in the UK it costs £10-£15.
If she has an infection, Tylan is very unlikely to treat it. A better one like Baytril might be a better choice, but it's banned for use in poultry, though many people, myself included, still use it.
. That product is not a de-wormer, it's a supplement.I just bought this Backyard Chicken Health Pack which has Oxy E-100, Zyfend A, and Healthyflock Tabs. It's the time of year for me to worm the flock, and so I'm putting this out there in case it will help Ariana at all.
I'm going to check her crop first thing tomorrow morning.
She doesn't appear to be in pain, so if it is Egg Yolk Peritontitis, I think I'd like to wait to put her down until it gets worse.
Another possibility is cancer. She could have oviduct cancer that has spread to her intestines.
I just bought this Backyard Chicken Health Pack which has Oxy E-100, Zyfend A, and Healthyflock Tabs. It's the time of year for me to worm the flock, and so I'm putting this out there in case it will help Ariana at all.
I'm going to check her crop first thing tomorrow morning.
She doesn't appear to be in pain, so if it is Egg Yolk Peritontitis, I think I'd like to wait to put her down until it gets worse.
I don’t think that the wormer in your health pack has anything that will kill worms. The other 2 products are something to purify water and something to give probiotics. I ‘m not sure why the water would need purifying. Here is a thread about zyfend A:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/worming.1007831/#post-15602701
The crop should be checked first thing in the morning, to see if it empties overnight. Check to see if it feels mostly empty, full, doughy, firm, or puffy. Crops can become sluggish during any illness— it isn’t always due to a crop impaction or sour crop.
I have lost hens several years old who were not laying, and who had become very thin toward the end. They frequently had slow or full crops, as a side effect. Many times, I would not know what was wrong exactly until I performed a necropsy after death. I had found salpingitis, possible oviduct cancer, ascites, and possible fatty liver disease in some.
If you wish to use an antibiotic, Baytril is probably the best, available online as enrofloxacin, and some use amoxicillin, which you can buy as Fish Mox. Those may buy time, but reproductive disorders are all fatal.
As for wormers I would either get a fecal test by a vet, or use Valbazen or SafeGuard Liquid Goat Wormer. Both are good to treat most chicken worms, and are best given orally to each chicken individually.
Reading this thread motivated me to take another look at an old hen of mine that sounds a lot like your hen.
This time I inserted a finger into her vent and I could feel little pimple like things that shouldn't have been there, so I made the decision to euthanize her. If you are interested I can post a picture of what I felt when I stuck my finger in her vet, and maybe you could check your hen for this too.
- *Drastic* weight loss (3.5 pounds)
- Poopy butt
- No eggs in many months
- Slow crop
This time I inserted a finger into her vent and I could feel little pimple like things that shouldn't have been there, so I made the decision to euthanize her. If you are interested I can post a picture of what I felt when I stuck my finger in her vet, and maybe you could check your hen for this too.
Even if the OP is not interested, I'm sure that there are plenty of us that would be, Kathy. Can you post it on the necropsy thread and post a link here, so that anyone who may be offended can choose not to look.
Yes, I will do that! Need to have DH take the picture, then I will post it.
- Thread starter
- #20
- Jun 10, 2017
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Okay. I just checked her crop after she had no food all night, and it was maybe 3/4 of a ping pong ball amount full.
I'm going to massage her crop in case she has this grass impaction and hopefully that does something.
I'm going to massage her crop in case she has this grass impaction and hopefully that does something.
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