Young Polish Hen, suddenly letheargic, bright green liquid stools

[CCsGarden]

She could be egg bound. Droppings seem to have some egg in them. I just had one die on Friday due to egg bounding higher up in the body. I couldn't feel it but her droppings showed it was a problem. I would give her some calcium and a warm Epsom salt bath.

(Mt hen had bright green droppings like that)

Bright green droppings can also indicate infection.

 

[BY Bob]

She could be egg bound. Droppings seem to have some egg in them. I just had one die on Friday due to egg bounding higher up in the body. I couldn't feel it but her droppings showed it was a problem. I would give her some calcium and a warm Epsom salt bath.

(Mt hen had bright green droppings like that)

Bright green droppings can also indicate infection.

She has been up and moving all day today. Her poo looks like this now.

The green is significantly reduced.

While she ate nothing yesterday today she has had mealworms, blueberries, grapes, and a little chick feed.

Her tail is still not upright but she has been standing all day.

 

[BY Bob]

Well I have done what many people do when they post something looking for help, I have not stayed engaged and let everyone know what happened.

First let me say thank you to everyone who helped either here or on my thread. This was a harrowing journey and I could not have made it through without your help, ideas, and support. I am going to now relay what happened day by day so hopefully others can learn from my experience.

Second, let me apologize for not doing this sooner and certainly for not doing this live as it unfolded. It is a terrible thing to ask for help and then not keep people informed as to the outcome.

 

[BY Bob]

I posted her on 10/22 with my concerns.

10/23
She was improved. Here she is eating.

She even enjoyed the cat's toy!

She Even roosted on the cats' house!

I was thinking that perhaps it was some kind of toxin. As a microbiologist, I am very conservative when it comes to antibiotic treatment, so I did not treat her with antibiotics at this point. Looking back, this was a mistake.

 

[BY Bob]

10/24
Her tail was up and she looked further improved.

I really thought she had gotten into a toxin of some kind. She went back outside with her friends.

 

[BY Bob]

10/25

That morning, I found her lying under the hanging feeder barely moving with Joy by her side. I brought her into the house and started her on 0.3 ml Baytril, twice a day.

She continued to decline throughout the day, so I took her out into the sun to see the other chickens and prepared for her to leave us. Joy came by to visit her.

She had a full craw at 2:00 pm and that would be the last she would eat on her own for quite a while.

I started giving her 1 cc of Nutridrench and 3 ccs of water every 2 to 3 hours by syringe I also started direct dosing Corid, because why not. It could not hurt at this point.

By the end of the day, she could no longer hold her head up but was still breathing. She was essentially comatose. I expected to find her having passed away in the morning.

 

[BY Bob]

10/26
The morning of 10/26, she looked like this. Unable to hold her head up on her own.

She spent the entire day in my lap. We listened to light jazz and I continued to syringe, Nutridrench, water every 2 to 3 hours along with medicine when appropriate.

At noon her mouth was so full of muck that it was difficult to treat her. I believe that she was dehydrated at this point as with the constant dosing with water it slowly cleared up over the next 24 hours.

I started adding Meloxicam for pain relief on the advice of @ChicoryBlue Just in case she might be in pain. After adding the meloxicam, she moved much less. I wondered whether the movement was driven by pain or she was slowing down even more.

She did start to try to raise her head at times later in the day but was still essentially comatose. Her first bowel movement of the day occurred sometime in the mid-afternoon.

When I tried to give fluids at 5:30 pm she fought me hard and her craw was full of liquid. I feared her digestive system might be shutting down. I started to stretch the water and Nutridrench out to every 3 to 4 hours. This seemed to do the trick. I think I had been dosing her with water and Nutridrench too often as after extending the dosing timeframe her craw would be empty when it was time to give her more.

 

[BY Bob]

10/27

On the morning of the 27th she was essentially unchanged from the 26th. Still unable to raise her head but still with us. It was suggested by @bgmathteach that I add a heating pad to the crate to keep her warm, so I did. She did not like this and found a way to move herself off the heating pad. After putting her back onto the pad and watching her slowly move off of it, I removed the heating pad from the crate.

I started to see some movement in the morning. It was almost like she had an inch on her back.

She was fighting me horribly when I was trying to dose her with water and Nutridrench by the afternoon. One needs to watch our mental state when caring for a chicken like this as I thought she wanted me to leave her alone so she could pass away. I even started exploring options to have her put down as I did not wisht to torture her to keep her alive.

I was on the phone with @RoyalChick discussing just that when Niamh started to scoot her away across my lap. She did it once and I put he back next to me. When she did it a second time I went ahead and put her on the floor. This is the video of her after I put her on the floor.

15 minutes later she was in the dining room eating and drinking on her own!

It was the most amazing thing I have ever seen. She just woke up like she had been asleep.

It was almost always 3 days for antibiotics to show results and here she was, back with us on day 3 of her treatment.

That evening she was roosting on the cat house at bedtime.

 

[BY Bob]

10/28

When she woke up on 1/28, she was ready to go. I dosed her with her meds; we hung out for a while and then she headed to the dining room to eat with her friend, the cat Eowyn.

Her craw was emptying properly but I made grit available to her in case she needed some. I started to provide probiotics to try and start the rebuilding of her normal flora.

I weighed her on the 28th and found that she had lost 0.15kg or 10% of her body weight through this sickness.

She made a gorgeous normal poo on the kitchen floor. I was never so happy to see chicken crap on my kitchen floor.

Roosting that night was a riot as she tried every location in the house, eventually settling on the couch next Mrs BY Bob’s leg as the best place to sleep.

 

[BY Bob]

10/29

In the afternoon, Niamh chose to leave the house and go see her friends outside.

The first thing she did after reminding everyone she was there was to take a long dust bath.

She even tried to roost outside of the coop on the porch roof. She definitely prefers to roost in the wild.

We wrapped up her course of antibiotics at 5 days and all seemed good.