What to do for a dying chicken...

[KerriChick]

Our sweet buckeye Brownie is on her last little chicken legs. She has always had issues-she was the pasty butt chick but I bathed her and nursed her and she grew strong and started off laying well last year, but her poop was always a little off(with periods of being fine). She is free of worms and parasites, all 3 other chickens are as healthy as ever, but she hasn't laid in a year and had a super hard molt this fall which she never seemed to fully recover from. During her molt she struggled with crop issues that seemed to mostly resolve after treatment, so I put her back with her flock after a few days of indoor pampering and she perked up and has been hanging out with them in our large back yard since, foraging and managing ok. She has been slowly losing weight and her feathers kind of stopped growing in. I am very sure she has either a reproductive issue or some other unseen disease(cancer or something of the sort) that has caused her to waste away slowly. Even with all of this, she still has been the first one out of the coop in the morning to check out the chicken bucket, and this morning she took a long drink of water before heading off with the flock.

This afternoon I found her separated from the flock and under a large bush-had to look hard to even find her. She can't stand well and her eyes are partially closed(she had been haning out with her eyes closed periodically with the flock already). I think she has decided to go. She's so light. I did syringe some Chick Boost and Probiotics just in case she wants to perk back up and rejoin the girls, but she just seems so tired. The other girls aren't even putting up a fuss-they know she hasn't been well for a long time.

I don't want to cull her, I do think she will go peacefully when she is ready. I will if she is distressed, tho. Right now she is just in a box with some feed and I'm syringing water. If she does perk up at all I will put her back with the girls and keep up her probiotics.

Any help or suggestions for stuff I may not be doing? I am not rushing her to a vet, this is not a curable issue imho. I just want her to be comfortable.

Thanks for reading.

 

[KerriChick]

(the probiotics seem to help a little with her ongoing gut issues, which come and go and I think are related to her reproductive/other issues)

 

[KerriChick]

I put her in with her flock tonight. I don’t expect her to make it until morning but I wanted her to be with them.

I think I just wanted to share with y’all because you folks might understand better than some what it means to lose your first chicken. My daughters are upset but I think we are all at peace with it. So it goes.