- Dec 23, 2012
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Hi everyone. One of my hens is in bad shape and I'm not sure if I can pull her through or if it would be better to put her down. My birds are not pets so it would not break my heart to do so, but I don't like to lose a hen if I can restore her to a good and productive life.
She is a Delaware and still in her prime age (two or three years old, I can't tell my two Delawares apart). This morning I found her on the ground a couple feet from the coop being picked on by the other hens. She is very weak and didn't fuss at my touch like she normally would, and wasn't even strong enough to sit herself up properly. She was laying on her side. When I picked her up for inspection the first thing I noticed is that she is literally skin and bones. She has no muscle mass and feels like a cleaned carcass with bones poking out. I panicked and put her in the hospital box with her own food & water. But she showed zero interest in eating or drinking, so I force fed her about a half a cup of fruit juice with a dropper. She offered no resistance at all. She pooped on my lap while I was feeding her, and it was basically just a gush of water with yellowish sandy-looking particles in it. It has been about two hours since I gave her the juice and she seems a tiny bit better. She's sleepy but she can sit upright now and wakes up when I approach. She even put up a little bit of a fight when I tried to administer more fluids with the dropper. I thought, well, perhaps she's on the bottom of the pecking order and maybe the other hens have been keeping her away from the food and water? That's never been an issue before but I can easily put in more food & water stations.
But just now I picked her up again and this time I noticed her abdomen is very swollen. Like, "how could I have missed that before" kind of swollen. It's the size of a softball. Her abdomen still has feathers on it and is pretty firm, but not rock hard. I've read about swollen abdomens on BYC before and I think I remember that hens usually don't get over it. I tried searching these symptoms again and there is a lot of varied information about it possibly being egg binding or peritonitis or worms or etc etc. Those causes are so varied that it's not useful to me unless I can find out what this is in her case. I'll inspect the other hens tonight when they return to the coop but for now I think it is just this one. I'm guessing that the swollen abdomen is the underlying cause of the malnutrition by causing either a lack of interest in food or difficulty in reaching the food.
I am in Oregon, and it's been dry and hot lately (hit 100 for a couple days two weeks ago, then has been 80's, then has been high 90's again the last couple days). I check their food and water daily. Because of the heat it's been common to see the whole flock (20 hens) lounging in the shade so I didn't notice anything unusual because of that. Today is cooler (80) and the other 19 are running around as usual. Now I feel awful that this girl can have something so wrong and I didn't notice. Should I keep trying to nurse this girl back to health, or is it kinder to put her down?
She is a Delaware and still in her prime age (two or three years old, I can't tell my two Delawares apart). This morning I found her on the ground a couple feet from the coop being picked on by the other hens. She is very weak and didn't fuss at my touch like she normally would, and wasn't even strong enough to sit herself up properly. She was laying on her side. When I picked her up for inspection the first thing I noticed is that she is literally skin and bones. She has no muscle mass and feels like a cleaned carcass with bones poking out. I panicked and put her in the hospital box with her own food & water. But she showed zero interest in eating or drinking, so I force fed her about a half a cup of fruit juice with a dropper. She offered no resistance at all. She pooped on my lap while I was feeding her, and it was basically just a gush of water with yellowish sandy-looking particles in it. It has been about two hours since I gave her the juice and she seems a tiny bit better. She's sleepy but she can sit upright now and wakes up when I approach. She even put up a little bit of a fight when I tried to administer more fluids with the dropper. I thought, well, perhaps she's on the bottom of the pecking order and maybe the other hens have been keeping her away from the food and water? That's never been an issue before but I can easily put in more food & water stations.
But just now I picked her up again and this time I noticed her abdomen is very swollen. Like, "how could I have missed that before" kind of swollen. It's the size of a softball. Her abdomen still has feathers on it and is pretty firm, but not rock hard. I've read about swollen abdomens on BYC before and I think I remember that hens usually don't get over it. I tried searching these symptoms again and there is a lot of varied information about it possibly being egg binding or peritonitis or worms or etc etc. Those causes are so varied that it's not useful to me unless I can find out what this is in her case. I'll inspect the other hens tonight when they return to the coop but for now I think it is just this one. I'm guessing that the swollen abdomen is the underlying cause of the malnutrition by causing either a lack of interest in food or difficulty in reaching the food.
I am in Oregon, and it's been dry and hot lately (hit 100 for a couple days two weeks ago, then has been 80's, then has been high 90's again the last couple days). I check their food and water daily. Because of the heat it's been common to see the whole flock (20 hens) lounging in the shade so I didn't notice anything unusual because of that. Today is cooler (80) and the other 19 are running around as usual. Now I feel awful that this girl can have something so wrong and I didn't notice. Should I keep trying to nurse this girl back to health, or is it kinder to put her down?
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packed in water . At any rate, I don't think she could have done this without the antibiotics… and she's not out of the woods yet. 
