Chicken help?

[boots-aregard]

Those of you who know chickens - advice please?

One of my chickens is waddling around like an Indian Runner duck all of a sudden. Wide stance, upright body posture. I've never had an egg-bound chicken and it's COLD now, so egglaying is done, but that's the only thing I can think of. She seems in good spirits, still eating, getting in and out of the coop.

Any clues? Anybody seen this before?

[MissDee]

Sorry, I don't have any advice - but check out the Backyard Chickens forum, you might get some help there. Hope it's something fixable and she's better soon!

[boots-aregard]

Backyard chickens was very helpful, but unfortunately we determined this was too advanced to deal with. Gave her a nice warm bath for about 30 minutes, then called it and put her down. Poor chicken. Being a laying hen is supposed to be the more preferable of the two different chicken occupations, but not for her.

I probably didn't catch this quick enough what with dashing in and out, preoccupied with company over the long weekend. She was very swollen.

[MissDee]

Oh, so sorry to hear that, poor chook. But it sounds like she was still acting in a fairly normal fashion, so by the time she exhibited symptoms it may have been too far along in any event - please don't beat yourself up over it.

[texsuze]

Very sorry to hear about your chook. It always confuses things when they act ok but yet have a real problem.

[boots-aregard]

Yeah. I mean, how do you tell if a chicken is "suffering"? If they're bleeding and the other hens are after them, OK. That's easy to figure out. But she was able to go in and out of the coop, and she was eating, and didn't have an enlarged croop. But, man, when we gave her a bath, and could hold her enough to get a good look at her abdomen...well, there wasn't any coming back from that problem. But she seemed pretty chipper still, and really liked the bath. I figured that was a good note to send her out on.

[KathyK]

I'm sorry you couldn't save her, but it's so sweet that you were able to do something for her that she enjoyed. I think I'd be ok with a nice warm bath being the last thing I remember.

[quinta]

Sorry about your hen, boots. We have a great local bird vet who will see chickens, and he says that it is very common for birds to go from everything-is-just-fine to nearly-dead in a very short period of time. We had a very similar experience with one of our hens earlier this year. Seemed fine Thursday, then listless on Friday and euthanized Sunday. Vet said that they will keep up normal behaviour as long as possible, including pretending to eat. I've been more careful since then about checking feet, weight, full crops, etc on a regular basis.