**Update** 3-yr old coss bill chicken not doing well. Looking for experience.

[ShelleyN]

We decided to jump into back yard chickens in February 2011 with three. We had noooo idea they would become such a part of our lives. We love chicken TV, snuggling with them and laughing as they jump ON the shovel after it's shoved in the dirt to ride it up and be the first to see what appears underneath. All has been fun and games until this month when our head chicken, who has a crossbill, started actin--off. She's now just staring at the fence, has green poops--which I understand means shes probably starving-- and generally hangs out with her tail down. Her face and head have always been a little compromised/squished, but she's been the most personable of our three, and as I said on top of the pecking order, so we thought she was different, stronger than other crossbills. The twist to the story is we have 3 new 4-week old chicks in the kitchen waiting to take everyone's place. While we love the girls, we actually have them for egg production and felt it was time to start over. Not the easiest decision and we're not sure we know exactly what we're going to do when the time comes but know we'll figure it out.

I'm writing this post in hopes there are others out there like me--making me feel better, and in hopes it may help someone else who is in the same position feeling guilty about the whole thing--making them feel better. It's funny how you can have plans to start over with your flock, then see a sign of illness and want to do everything in your power to cure a chicken that is in the near future slated for the pot! Humans are odd. I hope I'm not the only one.

 

[CMV]

You are not alone. Keeping birds is...complicated.

I keep my flocks rotating all the time. I used to have favorites, but I learned the hard way that the favorites are always the first to get hit by disease, dysfunction or predators. Any birds that have to be culled from the flock are eaten by my family or by the family dogs. Nothing is wasted. A few favorites, in the past, were buried and given proper funerals, but we don't have favorites anymore. We have passed that point in poultry keeping.

You are still new into this journey. You have finally reached the first real obstacle. I can't tell you how to deal with it because it is a personal decision we all have to come to in our own time. Just know that you are not alone, and try not to feel too badly about hard decisions because those hard decisions still have to be made.

Good luck.

 

[ShelleyN]

I read the Monastat thread. She definitely had full crop of syrup-like clear fluid that would leak when she bent over. I gave her 1/3 Monastat 3 supository orally morning and night (for the most part). It took about two days for the "boob" crop to deminish while I fed her crumbles with yogurt. She lost her appetite for that in about two days about the same time I started adding the oil to get things moving. The fourth day I offered scrambled egg and she gobbled it! She had some food in her crop at bedtime that night. Impossible to say if it was still the egg or something she ate on her own. Today at lunch she had a tiny bit of food in her crop and I encouraged her to eat some crumble moistened with water. Her tail is a tad higher than it's been but she's walking sort of like a fat lady with bad knees. A side to side hop-waddle of sorts.

I'm curious to see if she's cured, or the Monastat only delayes the inevetible. I feel like we're part of a scientific trial or something!

 

[CMV]

Monistat is very effective for yeast/fungal infections. I've used it myself with good results.

 

[ShelleyN]

Her crop was empty at bedtime last night so I scrambled two eggs and she gobbled them down. Still can't tell if she's really better or not but probably won't feed her the only eggs I get from the other two any more.