Sick Chick - lethargic, not eating, runny poop

[montanachicken]

Looking for suggestions/advice regarding our buff brahma bantam hen who is obviously not well these last couple days. She is 4 months old, one of 5 chickens. She recently spent quite a bit of time in our raspberry patch and shortly thereafter had some raspberry diarrhea. We figured it would pass, but she appears to be getting sicker. She has become lethargic, isolationg her self from the others, not eating or drinking much that we can tell.

Her stool became green and watery for a time and is now a mix of white, reddish-brown, with a green watery tinge, but has thickened up in the last day. We currently have her isolated from the other chickens (in the house in a dog crate) until we can figure out if she is just recovering from too many raspberries or something more serious.

I fed her a slurry of yogurt mixed with her regular food and water with a syringe with moderate success. We have put a few drops of apple cider vinegar in her water.

Any suggestions would be most appreciated. These chickens are like pets to us and much beloved by our children. We would be so sad to loose her.

 

[ChickenFanatic447]

First of all,

!!!

Unfortunately, I'm not to good at this myself and you seem to be doing the basics (isolating, apple cider vinegar, mash), the only thing I can suggest is getting her some Poli-Vi-Sol NO IRON, you can buy it at Wal-Mart or something, just drip a little in her mouth and it should help a little bit.

Hope she gets better!

 

[montanachicken]

Thanks for the advice on the vitamins.

In case it would be helpful to tell what's going on with her, here's some more info about what her poops have been like the last few days:
day 1: just looked like runny raspberries
day 2: very watery and lime green
day 3: still watery, kind of light brown, but with greenish and dark reddish blobs and some white

I did find some discussions on here by searching "green watery poop" that were very helpful. That's where we got the ideas we've been trying so far. I also checked out the "poop page" (gallery of pictures) but hers don't really look like anything there. This isn't just cecal poop, and I don't think it's just watery poop from heat (our days are up around 90 degrees right now, but they have lots of shade and it cools off to around 50 at night). In the last poop of hers that I inspected last night, the reddish blob does look almost like it's "meaty"... maybe intestinal lining?

I'm don't think this is an impacted crop. Honestly, I don't even know where exactly to feel for her crop, but when I feel her neck I just feel a firm tube that doesn't have any particular bulges. And there's no foul breath that I can sense.

Oh, and one more thing... we have been introducing the chickens gradually to more table scraps. The other night before this started happening, they got a little plate of scaps that included some hamburger (a little but and a little meat) and some corn. I'm hoping there wasn't something about the hamburger that caused this.

Thanks for any suggestions!

 

[rcentner]

in my experience, if a chicken has watery green and white poop it means they aren't eating well. make sure it eats, use the ACV in the water..it's like 1 tbsp per gallon. The all natural stuff with the mother in it is best, but the other stuff seems to work too. Give it some special treatment, cook up some scrambled eggs, will give good protein. I pull out all the stops to get them to eat. try anything.
good luck! I hope it turns around for you

 

[montanachicken]

Thanks for the suggestions. She actually didn't go for the scrambled egg. In fact, yesterday she wouldn't eat anything and we were getting worried.

Then at some point last night, she passed a big poop about the size of my little finger. It was very wierd, like a sausage with a casing around the outside. When I broke that open it was full of bright red stuff. I'm thinking it was still maybe just a huge clump of raspberries that had gotten stuck in her system somewhere. Anyway, today she's back to acting normal and eating. Maybe she was just really constipated!

Being a chicken newbie, I'm feeling like the first time parent of an infant all over again... probably over-reacting to things that are no big deal!