Urgent: strong chemical smell from vomit & poop

[DonyaQuick]

I have a hen just over a year old who was bouncy and fine until yesterday evening when she declined suddenly and became sluggish. Took her inside and she vomited clear liquid and had a bright green runny poo. Both things that came out had an extremely strong chemical odor - like what I associate with unsafe types of paint and solvents. She will drink but not eat. Kept her in a carrier overnight and she had another chemical smelling poo this morning but no vomit (yet). She has trouble with drinking where the water starts to dribble back out her beak after a few drinks. I would normally think sour crop but the bizarre smell is so weird. Anything bad she could have gotten into yesterday would have been in the enclosure or immediately around it, so I'm about to go rake the whole thing out and investigate. I will be sending my husband out to get apple cider vinegar later this morning in case it's sour crop. Does anyone have ideas on what would bring this on suddenly and smell like strong solvent? Or is that really what sour crop smells like? (I thought it was supposed to smell fermented) If she has poisoned herself eating something is there anything specific I should look for cleaning out the enclosure?

Sorry if my post is a disorganized mess; writing from my phone with a sick chicken on my lap.

 

[Kay_Sims]

Green colour poop can be an indication of not eating. I had a chicken that threw up some clear liquid years ago, the vet gave me some worming treatment which cleared it up. Best of luck

 

[DonyaQuick]

Green colour poop can be an indication of not eating. I had a chicken that threw up some clear liquid years ago, the vet gave me some worming treatment which cleared it up. Best of luck

What medication did you use? I think I can get ivermectin (the tubes for horses) and I currently have fenbendazole. Unfortunately there are no vets near my area that will do fecal floats for poultry to confirm worms.

 

[DonyaQuick]

I just found a patch of deeper substrate in the enclosure that has the same strong chemical-like odor. There is some kind of mold there. The material is decomposed enough I can't tell if the mold is on old wasted feed that they spilled a while back or if it's on old bits of plant from the clippings I give them. I have been doing deep litter but it looks to be a pocket that didn't get turned over for some time for whatever reason. Mycotoxins maybe?? In the worst of it last night my hen also had some comb darkening but that has cleared up. She seems to be improving but still doesn't want to eat (just wants to throw the food around).

Edit: btw the smell is NOT ammonia. There are some patches I dug up that smell faintly of that too and it's completely different.

 

[Kay_Sims]

What medication did you use? I think I can get ivermectin (the tubes for horses) and I currently have fenbendazole. Unfortunately there are no vets near my area that will do fecal floats for poultry to confirm worms.

I think it was panacur, at the time... a little ivermectin wouldn't do any harm

 

[Kay_Sims]

I just found a patch of deeper substrate in the enclosure that has the same strong chemical-like odor. There is some kind of mold there. The material is decomposed enough I can't tell if the mold is on old wasted feed that they spilled a while back or if it's on old bits of plant from the clippings I give them. I have been doing deep litter but it looks to be a pocket that didn't get turned over for some time for whatever reason. Mycotoxins maybe?? In the worst of it last night my hen also had some comb darkening but that has cleared up. She seems to be improving but still doesn't want to eat (just wants to throw the food around).

Edit: btw the smell is NOT ammonia. There are some patches I dug up that smell faintly of that too and it's completely

 

[Kay_Sims]

There is some stuff you can get which put's all the right nutrients back in to a sick/recovering chicken's. Lifeguard and intervit's.

 

[DonyaQuick]

My hen is doing better - good comb color and eating some wet mash now. Not eating as much as I'd like to see yet but she is drinking well. Still no more vomiting and a couple of poos have looked better with more solid, brown material. She still seems fatigued but is willing to walk around more.

This is what I found in the substrate that smelled like the stuff that came out of my hen. It just looks like mold. Nothing remarkable about it except for that strong, extremely strange odor. There was an extensive area of it near the bottom of the substrate. My chickens had dug there the past few days and went pretty deep in it so they may have dragged some of this stuff up.

I think it was panacur, at the time... a little ivermectin wouldn't do any harm

Looks like that is fenbendazole - good! So I have that in case I need to do a course of that with her.

There is some stuff you can get which put's all the right nutrients back in to a sick/recovering chicken's. Lifeguard and intervit's.

I have some hydrohen powder mix which is probiotics and elecrolytes I think. Are those two things similar?

 

[Kay_Sims]

That's it. Please could you keep me posted ❤

 

[DonyaQuick]

She was getting better up through last night, or so I thought. This morning she is on a weird sort of hunger strike. Her crop was empty as far as I can tell; a bit of squishy there but more the feeling of manipulating an empty sack than any sort of water balloon feeling like I've read is usual for sour crop. I thought maybe the confinement and isolation is getting to her so I took her out to let her see her flock. She seemed to perk up for a bit and foraged. She will eat live bugs as long as they don't move too fast, but that's all. She wants to forage but is very sluggish about it. Really not sure how to get this girl to eat now.