We ( my daughter and son in law and grandkids) have a 3 1/2 yr old chicken that has been a little "off" for a few days but has been eating and drinking a little bit. She has lost weight and been getting more listless but ate dried meal worms yesterday. Last night , Her breast had sunken in and her comb turned darker and flopped over. This morning the coop area she shares with one other chicken had massive diarrhea and she is completely lethargic. There is no one (vet) in San Angelo that treats chickens or has any advice,information, etc. My daughter said she had cleaned stool off her bum about two weeks ago. The chicken is not a dearly loved pet who we would desperately try to take to a large city to pay hundreds of dollars to save. I called Ideal Poultry but they were only able to validate that it probably wasn't a bird to human transmissable disease and that the other chicken who is acting normally and still laying, eating, drinking Probably hasn't caught anything. Infections typically have the incubation phase, the acute symptomatic phase recovery phase.. So I'm speculating that the one other chicken is ok ..My son in law will probaby come home and "put her to sleep" /kill her to put her out of her misery. My questions are: what is this? Could we have prevented this? Besides seriously sanitizing the coop by scrubbing w dilute bleach water, what else should we do? We have a separate coop with 9 chicks that are about four months old that we've had since one day old. Should we put down Seven dust? . Check the stool visually for worms? The very sick/dying chicken had mites a month or so ago but Seven dust in the coop area got rid of them. Just stressed out about what to do. ANY help suggestions, etc is greatly appreciated. Thanks Sue
At her age, probably internal laying or egg yolk peritonitis or reproductive cancer. hatchery hens are very prone to all those and the symptoms are similar. Reproductive malfunctions cannot be fixed other than maybe egg binding if you can reach the stuck egg. But that's not what you have there, doesn't sound like to me. No, you cannot prevent any of those things, though they say Vitamin E helps keep the egg tract tissues supple and lubricated (black oil sunflower seeds have E), which helps prevent egg binding, but isn't 100% foolproof. Internal laying is incurable and unpreventable. I have had almost none since getting better breeder stock and staying away from the hatchery stock, but lost maybe 15 hens before that to all those reproductive malfunctions. I have never used poison like Sevin Dust, only food grade diatomaceous earth (DE) around the coops. Orange Guard is a safe spray citrus oil based insecticide for the coop itself, spray in nooks and cracks, but not on the birds. You use invermectin pour on for worms or better yet, Valbazen which gets ALL worms and kills them in a safer manner, but is more expensive. Invermectin is 5 crops on the skin on the back of the neck. Valbazen is 1/2 cc squirted in the mouth.
