What's Wrong With Ruby? (Help!)

[jimbrooke]

For weeks now, our hen Ruby has had a whitish mucus discharge from her beak and terrible difficulty swallowing. I see no cankers in her mouth, but something is making it very hard for her to eat.

She won't touch her normal feed so we've been giving her

moistened cat food, ​

scrambled eggs, moistened wheat bread, some tuna fish...whatever she will eat. I added electrolytes and probiotics to the drinking water. When she eats she makes big gulping motions, trying to swallow, then shakes her head violently until the food flies out, then chases the morsel down and tries again.

She always cleans her plate but it takes her a LONG time to finish.​

Her poop is small and semi-runny and almost pure white, occasionally with some yellow in it.

As for medicines, we have wormed her and given her Tylan injections, which didn't help. I worry about the injections because when we gave them to her she was so skinny that there was literally no meat to inject into. We had to inject it into a fold of skin, so I've been wondering if it did any good. Since then she has gained some weight back, though she's nowhere near her normal weight yet. ​

The weirdest part is, Ruby is almost completely normal otherwise. Her comb's a bit flopped over, but she's talking, chasing us around, even jumping up to try to steal food from our hands. Except for the mucus she seems in good health.

Please help us cure her for good!

Thanks,
Jim

 

[azygous]

Ruby likely has a very stubborn case of Mycoplasmosis. You're doing all the right things, boosting her immune system with electrolytes and probiotics, but you need to treat her longer with the Tylan.

Instead of injecting it, try giving her the Tylan orally. Recently I had a hen I was treating with Tylan and I found it much more efficient to administer the drug via tubing and injecting the Tylan dose by a feeding syringe directly into her crop. If Ruby is having trouble swallowing, tube feeding her food would be a big help in building her back up while she is struggling to get rid of the mucous.