might lose a hen

[hughewil]

Got a hen I think may be egg bound. no egg in 2 days she s lethargic and keeps going to nesting box.

soaked her i epsome salts giving her nutri drench setting her in ac rate on a heating pad, no luck.

 

[dademoss]

Can't help much, only have had 5 hens ever. around my neck of the woods, SW oh, they are molting and quit laying cause of short daytimes. Mine are 8 1/2 years old so probably not representative your your flock

 

[Grimm]

What Dade said.

When we had a mixed breed flock I saw my girls stop laying at various times due to the shortened days or the cold or even molting. The only other time I had a hen stop laying it was because she was broody and wanted to hatch her eggs. No rooster so there was no point. I did let her sit but she soon got bored after a few days and moved on. She even stopped eating and I had to take her off the nest (fake eggs/wooden) and force her to move around the run to eat and drink. She looked rough but got her luster back once she broke her broodiness.

 

[Peanut]

My books say after 2 days she's done for. I've never seen this happen to a chicken. I've sewn up a few cattle that had uterine prolapse births and pulled more calves than I can count. But a chicken? not much you can do.

Do you have an eastern red cedar tree close by? (for the future). The fronds are great livestock medicine. Any time I see a chicken looking poorly I put a few fronds in their water, does wonders for fowl, goats and large livestock.

 

[LadyLocust]

My books say after 2 days she's done for. I've never seen this happen to chicken. I've sewn up a few cattle that had uterine prolapse births and pulled more calves than I can count. But a chicken? not much you can do.

Do you have an eastern red cedar tree close by? (for the future). The fronds are great livestock medicine. Any time I see a chicken looking poorly I put a few fronds in their water, does wonders for fowl, goats and large livestock.

Good to know!

 

[hughewil]

I don;t feel an egg in her belly and I inserted by finger into her vent and felt nothing so maybe it isn't egg bound. Other common thing I see for chickens looking lethargic and droopy is coccidia but her feces doesn't have any of the redness they say it would have.

 

[Peanut]

@hughewil Here's a post I made on eastern red cedar which is actually a juniper (Juniperus virginiana).

Cedar... Oil of cedar


Cedar is really good for chickens. I have a big cedar that leans over my chicken pen so it's easy to grab a few fronds and drop them in the water.

 

[Tootsie]

Peanut, thanks for your tips. I’m going to go back through your posts sometime and take notes. You have a wealth of information.
Yesterday I felt bad when I read your posts on pokeweed. I just dug them out of the yard this week. Huge roots! I may go try to salvage them, and put them where they’re out of the way.
I started reading an historical account of how, especially in the first few years of colonists in this country, plants were the things that made a difference between surviving or not.
And that ‘ugly’ cedar out in the yard now looks a whole lot better.
Please, keep sharing.

 

[hughewil]

well I don't think it was egg bound or coccidiosis. After soaking her last night and keeping her inside in a cage she seems fine and after putting her back outside she is acting normal.

I am now thinking she was just brody, that is why she hasn't laid an egg was lethargic and kept going and sitting in the nesting box (we have a fake egg in a couple of them because we have chickens laying for the 1st time and she was sitting on a fake egg) I have read that dumping water on a brooding chicken stops it and with us soaking her in the water last night and her acting normal today I am hoping that is what it was.

This is our first time owning chickens so it's new to us, and her symptoms could have been 5 or 6 different things when you google.

 

[Peanut]

Sounds like you have it under control. A bucket of water is what I use when a hen tries to go broody. It's what my grandpa did and it's worked for me also.

I've raised hundreds of chickens and never seen or heard of being egg bound. More than likely it's happened but I was unaware. From the reading I did most are dead in less than 48hrs. Chickens die all the time, most of the time I never know the reason.

If you want a crash course in laying hens find a place like this... My uncle has 3 laying houses, was there last week. 35K chickens per house, now this is a chicken coop!

Seriously though, several times I've had more than 40 hens. With that many hens by the time I notice one chicken is acting odd it's too late. Even with as few as 20 chickens things go unnoticed.