sick hen

[lolgan]

when i let my girls (and guy) out this morning, i noticed a hen was missing. turns out she was below a laying box, just sitting there. she let me pick her up without a fight which is pretty unusual so i knew something was wrong.

after an inspection, i found that one of her wattles is extremely swollen, probably 3x bigger than the other and has a black spot on it.

any ideas?


thanks a ton
-Logan

 

[threehorses]

This sounds as if she were injured. Just one black spot? Would you say it's rather flat (not raised like a pimple) and shiney (not ashey)?

Is the wattle heated?

First, I would keep her up in a coolish place - just not a very hot place. I'd try to feel the wattle to determine whether or not there was an injury and resulting swelling. Clean the "spot" with hydrogen peroxide - see if it bubbles indicating that it's an injury. If so, I would try to flush it out with iodine and water mixed into a solution the color of weak iced tea. Pat dry, and rub Neosporin ointment (or another antibiotic ointment without pain killers and without cortisone) onto the spot.

Does she seem "out of it" to you, or just scared.

I would have her up for a day with vitamins/electrolytes in the water. In a pinch you can use pedialyte or gatorade for a day (50/50 with water). And in a pinch, you could feed her a boiled egg mashed (feed the rest to your other girls).

Signs you want to look for and/or rule out are respiratory signs: wheezing, drainage from the eyes, sneezing, etc. That combined with a swollen wattle can mean pasteurella. But I suspect this is just an injury.

Do you have cats, incidentally? Other chickens I assume?

 

[lolgan]

alright so i went up to the coop to check on her, and she was worse than ever. i brought her out so i could see her better and she just laid on her side and had all this nasty stuff coming out of her mouth. i was planning on putting her down but then she just "pooped" out what looked like an egg white, twitched and died right in front of me

what the heck? did an egg break inside? just want to make i know what happened so i can hopefully prevent it from happening to any of the others.

 

[threehorses]

Quote:
Not possible that she was snake bitten? Something happened for sure. A simply injury doesn't cause that, unless it happened before (and it wasn't swollen so you of course wouldn't notice something that tiny), perhaps involved a cat (pasteurella is a killer to birds), or a snake bite, etc.

Because of her wattle, I doubt it was an egg. i believe the droppings you saw were her kidneys failing -the urates and urine (white crystals and urine) being passed out as she died.

How heart breaking. I'd just look at all of them carefully, feel their weights, check them for parasites, investigate the coop, etc. Be careful - wear some boots or good footwear in case of a snake. I'm so very sorry.