I realize I should have posted in here for advice long before now, but alas.
We had a chicken that had begun squeaking a couple weeks ago. She would squeak and shake her head a bit when she was eating. She was also a little raspy when breathing. We checked her crop and it seemed fine. She had no other symptoms and the rest of the flock was normal. We gave her Vet RX expecting that to do it, but she got worse. When she started gaping and not eating I brought her inside and began gapeworm treatment and continued Vet RX as well. They are on a deep letter wood mulch run so I don’t think they are at high risk for gapeworm, but her symptoms seems consistent with it. The night before she died I had just ordered some more meds for respiratory issues. She seemed to not be getting worse, but not much better either- still, I was not expecting her to be dead when I checked her yesterday morning. We have small children so we were not going to send her off to be tested. We buried her out back with a funeral.
I guess I just want to know for future in case I ever see the same symptoms again in another flock member, and of course I will post in here way sooner next time- the first weird squeak. We are only a year in and trying to proactively learn but I feel a bit overwhelmed by chicken health. We feed them really good feed and do lots of herbs and additions to their feed, healthy scraps, ACV and honey water, and they are on deep litter in fresh air all day.
Any ideas what the hen may have had or what we could have done differently, and could do differently if there’s a next time?
(Also, I was curious- we gave her a roost in the dog crate we had her in indoors. Is this a no-no for sick chickens? I was thinking later her body may have been exerting energy to roost that could have been put towards healing.)
We had a chicken that had begun squeaking a couple weeks ago. She would squeak and shake her head a bit when she was eating. She was also a little raspy when breathing. We checked her crop and it seemed fine. She had no other symptoms and the rest of the flock was normal. We gave her Vet RX expecting that to do it, but she got worse. When she started gaping and not eating I brought her inside and began gapeworm treatment and continued Vet RX as well. They are on a deep letter wood mulch run so I don’t think they are at high risk for gapeworm, but her symptoms seems consistent with it. The night before she died I had just ordered some more meds for respiratory issues. She seemed to not be getting worse, but not much better either- still, I was not expecting her to be dead when I checked her yesterday morning. We have small children so we were not going to send her off to be tested. We buried her out back with a funeral.
I guess I just want to know for future in case I ever see the same symptoms again in another flock member, and of course I will post in here way sooner next time- the first weird squeak. We are only a year in and trying to proactively learn but I feel a bit overwhelmed by chicken health. We feed them really good feed and do lots of herbs and additions to their feed, healthy scraps, ACV and honey water, and they are on deep litter in fresh air all day.
Any ideas what the hen may have had or what we could have done differently, and could do differently if there’s a next time?
(Also, I was curious- we gave her a roost in the dog crate we had her in indoors. Is this a no-no for sick chickens? I was thinking later her body may have been exerting energy to roost that could have been put towards healing.)
