temporarily paralyzed chickens, what is this?

[howlingwoodsfarm]

Well to anyone who might want an update. This has happened again to the same girl... now 4 times I think.. the one other girl it has only happened to 1 time. I think it is she gets egg bound. I found her the other day laying on the coop floor on her side, one of my d*mn leghorns was standing over her pecking her vent area. You could see the egg right there, trying to come out. I could even hear her straining to push it out. It finally did come out, it was soft shelled, not unusually big. Her whole vent area was just all pecked bloody. I put blue kote on the whole area and put her into my trusty cat carrier and AGAIN thought she would be dead in the AM. She was raring to go in the AM and has since laid a normal egg. The pecked raw area must have been her prolapse as she does not have any raw area visible now. I have gotten a new bag of corn, have gone through many bags of food. Lots of shavings and PDZ to dry up the coop and heat lights.... so I think it MIGHT be egg bound? I am amazed and disgusted by my chickens all the time. Disgusted they would eat each other and amazed they can survive.

 

[sammi]

you say it only happens in the evenings?

do you give them oyster shell or any calcium supplement?

I once read that using plastic trash containers for large bags of feed is not a good idea..since condensation can occur with plastic.
where is the feed kept?

what feed are you using?
do you offer free choice, or do you measure it?
how much corn vs. feed do they get?

do you have nest boxes?

 

[howlingwoodsfarm]

I would say yes to only in the evening, we have never gone out in the am to find a girl doing this. we check on them AM, noonish, and then around 4pm to put them to bed as that is when it gets dark. It is always the 4pmish time when we find them. She may have been like that for hours. They have free choice calcium supplement and their food is free choice from a hanging feeder, layer pellets from agway. They are stored in a large plastic tupperware container kept in the coop but we only put one bag in at a time and it is used up within a few days, we never put new food on the old and it cycles through pretty fast. We buy each bag of food one by one as my fiance works at agway and just brings one home every few days. They get about 5 hand fulls of corn each night for 23 chickens so I doubt they get very much each. We have never had a soft shelled egg before. We even get told our egg's shells are very thick by the people we sell them to. They have 6 nest boxes for all the girls. We actually have 8 but they don't use the bottom two. Like I said it has only happened to two of my chickens. The one girl it only happened to once and then this other it has happened to like 4 or 5 times now. So I am not sure. I do wish I knew for sure though, but they are all happy and healthy otherwise, and even the affected girl is up the next AM acting completely normal..and even laid us a nice normal egg the next day after it happened this last time.....

 

[crysmom]

I'm sorry this is happening. It sounds exactly like what is going on in my coop and my first bird that showed these symptoms 4 weeks ago just passed away yesterday. I have no clue what it is, has been suggested to be Mareks, or newcastle, but no definative diagnosis. The things I have read online don't seem like these diseases progress this slowly. Sometimes, and not often (maybe once or twice a week) i'll notice weird symptoms like some of them walk like they have pencils for legs (don't bend their toes) and sometimes they'll lay on their sides and eat the corn or veggie scraps.

 

[dlhunicorn]

...might be due to Toxoplasma Gondii. Here is a link which describes this happening (due to sciatic nerve involvement) and how it is often missed
http://jvdi.org/cgi/reprint/6/3/382.pdf

Edema, necrosis, and lymphocytic
neuritis in chicken 3 are accompanied by T. gondii tachyzoites (arrow).

You might also have a look here:
http://www.pjbs.org/ijps/fin714.pdf
Vitamin Induced Neurological Disease in Poultry​

 

[howlingwoodsfarm]

dlhunicorn-Those links are certainly helpful and it seems like trying some vitamin supplements might be a good place to try to remedy the situation but boy did reading those articles take me back to all those years of organic chemistry and my nursing school days. I don't think I could understand them if I did not have that background. I guess since every human is different this one chicken must be different from the rest and is lacking something the others aren't. I could understand better if it were occuring with more chickens or if she stayed in that condition and was not completely normal acting for another week or so until it happened again.. do you have any suggestions for changes I can make, I am totally open to options...

Heather

 

[dlhunicorn]

If it were my bird, I would separate and bring her in to a temp stable environment (warm) so I could observe her... I would write down...with times any and all symptoms including what and how she eats and do this for a few weeks .
It might be something in her reproductive system (a "glitch" even which might have nothing to do with diet or such even-who knows?) ... but one thing that seems obvious is that the sciatic nerve is involved and their can be many things that could be involved in that. After careful observation I would try a good supplement to her diet (something may be causing her intestines not to absorb her nutrients out of the feed properly)...
Hopefully you will find a dietary element that will help the condition.
I have a roo that I had to do this "process of elemination" with (different problem but same process of figuring out what would help him) and though I will never be sure what CAUSED it, I was lucky to find a supplement which did alleviate the symptoms and supplementing his diet in general ensured there was no further dietarary deficiencies and in this way supported (in general) his own immune system ...after several months he seemed to be over whatever it was that was ailing him and has been right as rain since. If it is a physiological factor (like something physiologically irreparably wrong within the reproductive system that is applying pressure on the sciatic nerve when an egg gets stuck, you might find no relief for her, however if you do not try you will never know)
Make sure she is wormed with a broad spectrum wormer if you have never wormed her.
This is all I can think of.