young chicken shaking head, beak, unable to eat

[MooseGardenCoup]

Since September 2024 we are raising our first flock of chicken. We have four, all about 20 weeks old now, and one of them is particularly unlucky. As a backstory:
- In her first week she was with us (12 weeks old), she got attacked by a raccoon. She had quite the bite in her neck, but miraculously recovered.
- About two weeks ago, we started to notice she was ill. She stopped eating and we self diagnosed she had a full crop. We added some oil to her menu as well as oyster shells. That fixed the full crop, but not her condition.
- After a few days of just sitting around and having no appetite at all, I took her inside, and that is when I noticed the huge amount of bugs on her. These were what I think were Northern Fowl mites. Discussing this with the country shop, they advised us Doktor Doom, to get rid of them. As a side note: none of the other birds were infected. This one bird had a lot (!!!). Doktor Doom was used to spray the coop and to give her a 'mist'. We did that for about 3 days, but that did not resolve much.
- After some more research, we decided to give her a bath, or, three baths: one with mild soap, one with vinegar, and one with water. That did wonders: I think we were able to wash away hundreds of thousands of mites. We repeated this for three days, after which we felt most of the mites were gone. They seem not to come back.
- Eating was still an issue though. I tried to keep her hydrated with a dropper with water and electrolytes, but that kept being a struggle. She was very low on energy (probably with a lot of blood loss).
-Days after the mites were gone, she developed a wry neck: not being able to keep her head up. We thought this might be because of not eating enough, so we became a bit more aggressive to make her eat, with electrolytes, scrambled eggs, and dissolved chicken food with mustard seeds.
- The wry neck seems to be better now, but she still will not eat independently. Today I took her out to the rest of the flock to socialize a bit and was able to make a movie of her current behavior: She shakes her head a lot, has her beak trembling, but does seem to have ambition to eat.

Please find the video attached. Does anybody have an idea how to progress from here? I feel like we have tried a lot of the suggestions on this forum but figured it would be good to ask the specific question by now.

Any help will be greatly appreciated!

 

[nuthatched]

Give her about a third of a B complex tablet every day for a few weeks. Any brand from the grocery store.

 

[MooseGardenCoup]

Give her about a third of a B complex tablet every day for a few weeks. Any brand from the grocery store.

Thank you for that advice!
I realize that previously the movie I made did not upload well. I uploaded it to Youtube now for convenience. Please see in the post above. Is that the behavior you were imagining too?

 

[Eggcessive]

She looks to have some neurological symptoms, possibly from the earlier injury, a vitamin E or B1 thiamine deficiency, or from one of several viral illnesses, such as Mareks or others. I would try the human B complex and some human vitamin E 400 IU daily for a couple of weeks to see if it helps. You could keep trying to get her taking a wet mash of chicken feed and a small bit of cooked egg. Tube feeding is also something to consider.

 

[MooseGardenCoup]

She looks to have some neurological symptoms, possibly from the earlier injury, a vitamin E or B1 thiamine deficiency, or from one of several viral illnesses, such as Mareks or others. I would try the human B complex and some human vitamin E 400 IU daily for a couple of weeks to see if it helps. You could keep trying to get her taking a wet mash of chicken feed and a small bit of cooked egg. Tube feeding is also something to consider.

Thanks! We got both and will make sure to give that a go. I'll make sure to report back.

 

[MooseGardenCoup]

I was hoping to give an update earlier but there was nothing definitive to report yet. So, as an end of year (and hopefully sort of definitive update):
We did start feeding her with vitamins (B and E from the pharmacie, and Poul-vite from the country store). She was not eating on her own, so we had to open her mouth by hand and then scoop it in. This worked well with some mixture of scrambled egg, kale, mustard seeds and layer feed. That lasted for about a week. In that period, we noticed some red mites on her as well. We moved her outside again after noticing that, and that was the last moment we saw the red mites. She was really weak at that point and we did start to lose hope.
After about a week she started eating on her own again though (hello hope) but developed the wry neck again, stubbornly keeping her head up side down. Around this time Merl Haggard was on the radio (if we can make it through December), and we decided to live by that song. We had her with the rest of the coop from Christmas till now (New years eve), feeding her extras on her special diet.
We have had one more instance where we noticed new Northern Fowl Mites. After giving her another bath (this one, and I can totally recommend it: https://backyardpoultry.iamcountryside.com/feed-health/how-to-bathe-a-chicken/), and keeping her inside for one more night (it was cold outside!), we feel we have that under control.
Now we see improvements every day. It is a joy to see again. Today she was roaming the garden again. It seemed a bit drunk, head still heavy, but getting there. It looks like she made it through december .
Happy new years all, and thanks for all the advice!