- Aug 11, 2011
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Our silkie/EE cross girls have just started laying! Everything was going so well but naturally, I had to throw a wrench in it.
We’ve had these four silkie/EE mixes from MPC since early September. They graduated to their enclosed coop/run in October and seemed to be doing well -
So naturally, I went and added a new pullet.
She’s a black/white splash Polish who was around the same age as our girls and being bullied in her old flock. She seemed to integrate well with our girls, a little standoffish and reactive at first, but I had thought they were getting along fine.
When we got the first four birds, me, my two kids and my wife all named one, and my hen, Calamity Jane, has been an absolute pain in the neck, haha.
She was the first to lay, and had a minor vent prolapse and had to come inside the house for an Epsom soak and to rest it off. Then she flew into not one, but two fly traps, and came inside again for a bath and hair cut. And then yesterday, bless her heart, she decided to dust bathe right in someone’s cecal poo.
I went to help her get it off in their actual dust bath (she had been rolling in the litter instead) when I noticed her keel bone seemed more prominent than the other hens. I’d been worried about parasites for a while now so I called our avian vet who sees our parrots and lucked out and got a same day appointment.
Vet agrees with my assessment that she’s thin (4/9 body scale), and I remarked that yesterday her crop had been empty when all the other girls’ were full in the coop, but that today (now that she’s in my bathroom) it’s full again.
We are running a fecal, and if that comes back negative, we will likely opt for bloodwork and possibly an x ray (although I’m not sure about an xray; they are kept in the run full time and she’s passing normal looking stool). However, I’m worried that between all the indoor stints she’s had due to being kind of goofy and the Polish hen being pretty snippy, that she’s not feeling safe enough to get to the feeder unless I’m out there with her.
I have already placed an order for a smaller, secondary feeder/waterer to be mounted on the other end of the run from the original ones. For now she’s in our basement bathroom where she has free access to food and water away from the other hens.
Is there anything else I can do? While I am home most of the day, when I glance out into the yard to see how the girls are doing they’re usually just milling around, so I’m surprised that she’s lost weight.
They DID just start laying in earnest, and I wonder if maybe that’s impacting their body condition too. They have free access to scratch and peck layer crumble all day except at night when they’re in their coop.
We’ve had these four silkie/EE mixes from MPC since early September. They graduated to their enclosed coop/run in October and seemed to be doing well -
So naturally, I went and added a new pullet.
She’s a black/white splash Polish who was around the same age as our girls and being bullied in her old flock. She seemed to integrate well with our girls, a little standoffish and reactive at first, but I had thought they were getting along fine.
When we got the first four birds, me, my two kids and my wife all named one, and my hen, Calamity Jane, has been an absolute pain in the neck, haha.
She was the first to lay, and had a minor vent prolapse and had to come inside the house for an Epsom soak and to rest it off. Then she flew into not one, but two fly traps, and came inside again for a bath and hair cut. And then yesterday, bless her heart, she decided to dust bathe right in someone’s cecal poo.
I went to help her get it off in their actual dust bath (she had been rolling in the litter instead) when I noticed her keel bone seemed more prominent than the other hens. I’d been worried about parasites for a while now so I called our avian vet who sees our parrots and lucked out and got a same day appointment.
Vet agrees with my assessment that she’s thin (4/9 body scale), and I remarked that yesterday her crop had been empty when all the other girls’ were full in the coop, but that today (now that she’s in my bathroom) it’s full again.
We are running a fecal, and if that comes back negative, we will likely opt for bloodwork and possibly an x ray (although I’m not sure about an xray; they are kept in the run full time and she’s passing normal looking stool). However, I’m worried that between all the indoor stints she’s had due to being kind of goofy and the Polish hen being pretty snippy, that she’s not feeling safe enough to get to the feeder unless I’m out there with her.
I have already placed an order for a smaller, secondary feeder/waterer to be mounted on the other end of the run from the original ones. For now she’s in our basement bathroom where she has free access to food and water away from the other hens.
Is there anything else I can do? While I am home most of the day, when I glance out into the yard to see how the girls are doing they’re usually just milling around, so I’m surprised that she’s lost weight.
They DID just start laying in earnest, and I wonder if maybe that’s impacting their body condition too. They have free access to scratch and peck layer crumble all day except at night when they’re in their coop.
