Fingers
crossed she is healed ...I gave her a few herbs as remedies to eat and some
aromatherapy oils gently massaged in while she was in my care inside, also a lot of simply holding and
stroking and cuddling and loving.
Not sure which helped the most but
frankly do not care as what ever it was I
did, it seems to have saved her for now. I really thought she was
going to die on my lap in the first few hours after I got her out of the
Mega Hen pen on Thurs :-(
She laid a HUGE soft shelled egg on
Thurs - and has laid nothing since. She was looking like she would die AFTER laying
the soft egg, which was odd as usually hens experience relief after laying. She did not have an elevated temp, so no
infection and she has not laid since then but does not look egg bound and I am
hoping she will just go into a natural moult and shed/regrow feather
and stop laying while she does so -
For the last four days I have been feeding her high
protein food, I have increased calcium in her feed and she has eaten loads - I have also upped her corn/oat feed
and dropped the layers pellet right off to hopefully promote a moult.
I suspect she was just getting so bullied, not eating
properly, she is still bald and still trying to lay and it all got too
much for her. Hopefully she will pick up but I
WILL hoick her out back into hentensive care tomorrow if I think she is not
progressing properly again.
Ho hum ex batts are sent to test our resourcefulness to deal with a crisis!!
Fingers crossed she is healed ...I gave her a few herbs as remedies to eat and some aromatherapy oils gently massaged in while she was in my care inside, also a lot of simply holding and stroking and cuddling and loving.
Not sure which helped the most but frankly do not care as what ever it was I did, it seems to have saved her for now. I really thought she was going to die on my lap in the first few hours after I got her out of the Mega Hen pen on Thurs :-(
She laid a HUGE soft shelled egg on Thurs - and has laid nothing since. She was looking like she would die AFTER laying the soft egg, which was odd as usually hens experience relief after laying. She did not have an elevated temp, so no infection and she has not laid since then but does not look egg bound and I am hoping she will just go into a natural moult and shed/regrow feather and stop laying while she does so -
We had a Chicken Whisperer in our Community Garden who cuddled and nurtured our sick hens! Love the 'hentensive'!
ReplyDeleteSome of our endangered chicken breeds are feather eaters and would peck some of the others bald. We'd tried all kinds of remedies, thinking it was a nutritional problem. It turned out that Vitamin C helped when they are pecking someone (or more than one) bald. They didn't want to eat citrus so I mixed Vitamin C supplement in with their feed.
ReplyDelete