Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[topochico225]

Watching! Bless you for taking this on

Here’s my tax, my big girls being naughty

 

[Perris]

Okay okay. I get the message @Perris

yay I was beginning to think nobody got it!

 

[TheCluckyClucker2]

I'm following! Here is my tax:

 

[Marie2020]

Watching! Bless you for taking this on
View attachment 2909592
Here’s my tax, my big girls being naughty

Naughty? Those girls are trying to fire up the barbecue. They're my kinda girls

 

[TropicalBabies]

Those girls are trying to fire up the barbecue.

***Gulp!*** Probably a risky thing for a fat troublemaking chicken to do.

 

[Shadrach]

Welcome to the thread @GoatsandGuineas , @topochico225 , @TheCluckyClucker2 @JacinLarkwell

 

[Shadrach]

These two I named Volt and Amp. They are apparently Red Rocks. I’ve never come across the breed before; Black Rocks yes, but these…
Amp LHS Volt RHS

They didn’t mix much with any of the other groups and tended to go around together. Henry the rooster was not fond of either of them. They looked reasonably healthy when I first started going to the allotments but I did wonder a bit about why Henry would drive them away from the other hens especially when food was involved.

Volt went from looking active and alert to a bit subdued in the space of 24 hours. I put it down to either the onset of moult or just one of those off days. She was like this for a couple of days and at that point I was concerned enough to take her home and check her over properly. She had fairly extensive feather mite but more concerning was she had lice. Ime healthy chickens rarely get lice, mites yes but lice most chickens will peck off if the are fit and if they won’t in a some of the family groups I’ve known, their rooster will pick the lice off when he sees them.
Volt


I didn’t have a pet carrier so I carried Volt home in a shopping basket. It would have looked a rather strange sight as I walked home along a major road with a hens head occasional appearing out of the top of the shopping bag.

Not only did she have lice and mites, she also had ascitis (water belly).

If you run your hand under a hens rear end and feel a much softer and larger bulge below the hens vent and up to between her legs that is likely to be ascitis. The easiest way to know what you are feeling for is to feel a few hens in this area and make a comparison. It is fairly apparent once you’ve felt a hen who is suffering from it.

Volt spent the night in the shed in a large container with a soft towel as bedding she ate a very little ad dozed off as I watched. The next morning she wouldn’t eat any commercial feed but did eat a bit of grass. I took her back to the allotment later that day so she could be with her sister (?) and the rest of the group.

I had dealt with most of the lice that night using permethrin at the back of her neck and under her wings. She seemed slightly more comfortable the next day.

I took her home the following night when she made no signs of heading towards the coop long after the rest had gone to roost.

The next day she wouldn’t eat and I carried her back to the allotments knowing that what would now be best for her was a quick end to her life. I placed her in the small broody coop that night. There is a hen that roosts in there so she had some company. I did my best to make her a comfortable nest bed.

She was euthanised early the next morning.

 

[pennyJo1960]

You made the last days nice for her

 

[Shadrach]

What I'm upset about is I should have found this problem with Volt much earlier.
I had checked her over but I didn't check her for ascitis. She didn't have the lice problem when I checked (she was ealry on the check list because she was easy to handle) and while there were traces of gunk around her feather quills indicating feather mite the problem didn't look serious enough to warrent immediate action and at that time I didn't have anything to treat it with anyway.

A bit about Ascitis.
Ascitis itself is not so much a disease as a symptom. There is no cure. I get rather irritated when I read on the ER forums people encouraging others in believing that this problem can be cured.
Ascitis is the result of water accumulation in the liver which gets dumped into the belly of the chicken causing the belly to swell like a balloon. The cause of the problem is most often a pressure build up between the heart and lungs. This indicates that there are heart problems causing pulmonary hypertension.

You can, and people have drained the belly of excess fluid but this does absolutely nothing for the underlying problem. It seems from posts I have read thhat vets will happily carry ouut a draining procedure, at considrable cost I might add, but omit to tell the chicken keeper that their hen is dying. Some hens will struggle on for a few months and appear relatively healthy but the heart problem is still ticking away and may be causing a high degree of pain which as many will know is very hard to gauge with chickens who have this annoying habit of looking healthy when you are watching them and then dropping dead as your back is turned.

 

[Shadrach]

This is Matilda.
In the first picture she is not aware that I am looking at her. I'm a bit of a distance away and pretending to look elsewhere.
Her tail is a bit down and her head slightly sunken into her breast.
In the second picture she knows I'm looking at her. She now looks alert and her taill is up.
Is Matilda sick?