Any chicken experts about ?

[f1rob]

3 bantams in a house and all seemed fine till this morning "clara" (women!)was always the 1st out of the hut but not this morning
Very sluggish hunched up ,when I picked here up found out she is flesh and bone (she is so well feathered she looked fine !
Till today she has been feeding fine-corn, layers mash.sweetcorn ect so don't ungerstand the weight loss ???
Day has gone on and most of the day she has had one eye closed ? no redness or discharge but she keeps bending her neck round and rubbing the closed eye on her back ??? any ideas anyone

[bexVN]

Do you have a chicken friendly vet because it sounds like you need to take her tomorrow. I don't know what it could be unfortunately but I don't think it's something that will get better without vet help.

[UnderTheRadar]

The most common problem for a chicken behaving like this is for it to become egg-bound, where an egg actually becomes bound to the chicken inside. Is it still laying? It's pretty much game over in this case and its kindest to take it to the vet for a final injection. A less serious problem, which I'm afraid this doesn't sound like is red mites (Google it). We have kept 50+ chickens for a number of years.

[f1rob]

Thanks for the reply checked her/the house for red mites also to see if it was lice and its all clean
Don't think she is egg bound, seen that before and this is different(or her reaction to it is)

[UnderTheRadar]

OK, sounds like you already know the territory well :-) I'd be interested to hear what the vet says as we might come across it ourselves.

[f1rob]

Turns out it was Gape worm
Thou they were wormed not all worms are covered and had to get a new wormer from the vet that controls it
4 days on the new treatment and Clara is back to full health its just as well we found out, as just as we started treating the birds another started to show symptoms
View images for gape worm on google and you will see the weird affect it has on hens

[bexVN]

Good news :-). Was it the vet that diagnosed it? I've never heard of Gape worm but then I don't know a great deal about chickens!

We do have a vet that knows quite a bit and does see a few, I'll have to ask him about it (curiosity sake!)

Hope she continues to do well

[theboss]

I'm just about to treat my hens for gapeworm - its an unfortunate consequence of them having daily contact with lots of wild birds - we live on a gaming estate so pheasants are stting all over the garden constantly.

The worm lives in the birds throat so symptoms are usually of a respiratory nature - they characteristically gape their mouths whilst stretching their necks and can be heard to snuffle and cough.

The only thing on the market which kills it is flubenvet.

[f1rob]

Vet didn't have a clue ! was down to the power of the internet and you tube !
Same here ,in the middle of Norfolk surrounded by game birds (but never had a problem till now
Very effective treatment thou you could see results in 24hrs

[UnderTheRadar]

Good to hear Clara is back up and running :-) I'd not heard of Gapeworm before - so thank you for telling us about it. In my experience most small animal vets don't know a lot about chickens - one of our friends is a small animal vet and cats, dogs rabbits even rats and she knows it all, but not chickens. Chicken ownership is exploding at the moment so the knowledge-base will build.

ETA: Facebook groups can be your friend - there is a lot of knowledge in several hundred chicken enthusiasts - as well as a few nutters :-)

Edited by UnderTheRadar on Wednesday 23 July 05:44

[theboss]

I've had to dose flubenvet several times now because of this gapeworm problem - the current strategy is with Marriage's pre-mixed layers pellets as this is very cost effective for <20 birds and saves the aggro of mixing. Advice is to do this quarterly if necessary. Its good to get on top of it as quickly as possible - but as observed the treatment is very effective and the birds look healthier after barely a day. In my case symptoms have been as follows -

1) the obvious gaping although you don't always see this unless you observe the birds continuously
2) birds looking withdrawn, sleeping a lot, not eating much
3) dodgy looking st - runny / mucous-like (yuk)
4) wattle/comb going paler than usual
5) soft shelled or no eggs

As well as giving the flubenvet, I give the house an extra-thorough dowsing in poultry shield, and if they are contained you can also get a disinfectant powder to sprinkle on the ground to kill worm eggs.

Also keep the grass nice and short as the sun kills them...