BuddingGardener
Songster
Hi everyone! I have a 1-year-old Speckled Sussex hen who has always been very chatty and vigorous, and much more excited about foraging than she ever was about her feed (she started growing faster once she was moved outside as a chick due to the foraging time she got every day). A few weeks ago she went intensely broody, and we are unable to let her hatch chicks, so we broke her broodiness using cool water bottles under her breast for part of a day. This seemed to do the trick, and she acted like her chatty, goofy, normal self for about a week.
A few days ago she, VERY suddenly, got lethargic and refused food/foraging time. I took her to an exotic vet who did a full workup and xrays on her, and there was nothing really obviously alarming except a bit of inflammation in her lungs -- which is strange because she has not been wheezing. No eggs on the way (just some forming egg yolk follicles), no soft shell eggs inside of her, no internal laying. She was placed on anti-inflammatories and a course of antibiotics, and since then, I've placed her in the 'sick' pen and coop on her own where she can still see her flockmates.
They also found that she was underweight, which I'm at a loss for. I'm not sure if she's always been underweight (these are my first chickens and I am not 100% sure how a 'healthy' vs 'skinny' breast should feel on a chicken), but there are multiple feeders in my run and we are currently using a local feed mill's 19% protein pellets mixed in 50/50 with the last of our Purina Layena crumbles (16%). Could being broody for a short time have put her underweight, or was she carrying an illness for awhile to cause this?
She is acting much better on her meds and foraging in her run space as usual, but still doesn't eat as much feed as I'd like her to eat. It's only been 2 days so I'm trying to be patient, but I'm concerned about monitoring her intake for the foreseeable future. When we isolated her to a dog crate for one day while we were setting up our 'sick' bay, she was absolutely miserable and preferred yelling at us to actually eating a reasonable amount of food, so confining her further is not an option imo.
Should I treat her more? It's not exactly balanced but if she's skinny, I want to make sure she puts on weight. I used to treat my chickens with a few tablespoons of chopped vegetables every day, but stopped that and reduced to once per week when one of my Easter Eggers developed laying issues (she ended up being an internal layer and passed away so that's a moot point now). Should I just keep everything stable until her med course is finished? Perhaps her appetite will spike a bit more when she's feeling even better? I'd love to hear some advice from other chicken keepers who have seen this before.
A few days ago she, VERY suddenly, got lethargic and refused food/foraging time. I took her to an exotic vet who did a full workup and xrays on her, and there was nothing really obviously alarming except a bit of inflammation in her lungs -- which is strange because she has not been wheezing. No eggs on the way (just some forming egg yolk follicles), no soft shell eggs inside of her, no internal laying. She was placed on anti-inflammatories and a course of antibiotics, and since then, I've placed her in the 'sick' pen and coop on her own where she can still see her flockmates.
They also found that she was underweight, which I'm at a loss for. I'm not sure if she's always been underweight (these are my first chickens and I am not 100% sure how a 'healthy' vs 'skinny' breast should feel on a chicken), but there are multiple feeders in my run and we are currently using a local feed mill's 19% protein pellets mixed in 50/50 with the last of our Purina Layena crumbles (16%). Could being broody for a short time have put her underweight, or was she carrying an illness for awhile to cause this?
She is acting much better on her meds and foraging in her run space as usual, but still doesn't eat as much feed as I'd like her to eat. It's only been 2 days so I'm trying to be patient, but I'm concerned about monitoring her intake for the foreseeable future. When we isolated her to a dog crate for one day while we were setting up our 'sick' bay, she was absolutely miserable and preferred yelling at us to actually eating a reasonable amount of food, so confining her further is not an option imo.
Should I treat her more? It's not exactly balanced but if she's skinny, I want to make sure she puts on weight. I used to treat my chickens with a few tablespoons of chopped vegetables every day, but stopped that and reduced to once per week when one of my Easter Eggers developed laying issues (she ended up being an internal layer and passed away so that's a moot point now). Should I just keep everything stable until her med course is finished? Perhaps her appetite will spike a bit more when she's feeling even better? I'd love to hear some advice from other chicken keepers who have seen this before.
I'll start weighing her regularly once her treatment is over to make sure she's gaining a little.
