Hip/leg fracture or reproductive issue?

[DonyaQuick]

I have a hen called Brownie who was completely normal a week ago. One morning she started bouncing around being silly in the cool breeze; she went out of eyesight for a brief moment and then came back to me mostly dragging one leg - the change was quite sudden. At first she couldn’t put weight on her right leg without pain, then a couple days later her right leg seemed limp and cold. Now she is getting limited movement back in it and it’s warm again, but still obviously painful. For the first five days she ate/drank well, but yesterday she suddenly quit eating which is worrisome to me. She is still drinking plenty. Nothing feels obviously displaced or broken but there could be a fracture hidden somewhere.

Up until today I assumed it must be a hip fracture because the right back side of her ilium was very painful to the touch. However, I am wondering if this could actually all be fallout from a more cryptic reproductive issue instead, like internal laying late stages of ovarian cancer. Can those conditions produce similar symptoms to hip or upper leg fractures?

Brownie is 1.5 years old and is finishing up a molt, so she has not been laying eggs at all for a few weeks. The reason I ask about the possibility of things like ovarian cancer is that she has a history of egg/reproductive issues. I’ve had to give her emergency extra calcium citrate and crate care for egg binding 3 times already. Her eggs gradually got more strangely shaped and textured over time and she periodically lays soft shelled eggs regardless of how much calcium she gets. I also had to treat her for vent gleet this summer. I think some things are just not quite right with her reproductive system; I just don’t know whether that could be part of the cause of this most recent problem or not.

I have her in a 24x24 wire rabbit-type enclosure that I modified to let me access it from the top easily so I can clean around her easily. I haven’t done a sling because she hates being restrained and will thrash violently if she can’t sit exactly how she wants. She will be far more likely to stay still if I let her sprawl in deep shavings like she is currently than if I try to suspend her with dangling legs.

I do not have an avian/poultry/exotics vet within reasonable range. The few vets that are within range will not see poultry or do any testing for them; they are mammal-only. As a result, things like x-rays and prescription medications are not options for me.

 

[Eggcessive]

Without an xray, it would be hard to know if there is a fracture. She may have sprained a leg or hip, or have arthritis. Do you see any scabs on her foot pad, green bruising, swelling or redness along her entire leg? Does she have much room in the rabbit cage? A wire dog crate with food and water is very good for isolating and forcing rest. Hard to know exactly what is going on with her leg/hip. Mareks is always something to consider if you have added any new birds to your flock recently. It usually strike in younger chickens though. Chickens may injure themselves jumping to and from roosts, and sometimes a rooster can injure them when breeding. You could try some anti inflammatory medicine, such as aspirin 1/2 tablet of the 81 mg twice a day. B complex vitamins 1/4 to 1/2 tablet daily may help.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Do you see any scabs on her foot pad, green bruising, swelling or redness along her entire leg?

None at all that I can see. Bumblefoot was one of the first things I checked for but her feet look fine. She is so fluffy it's hard for me to see the state of the skin on her leg above the hock. It's hard to tell if there is any minor swelling up there for the same reason.

Does she have much room in the rabbit cage? A wire dog crate with food and water is very good for isolating and forcing rest.

Sprawled out she only takes up about 1/3 of the floor area of the rabbit cage. She doesn't move around much and can spread out as much as she wants. I've been keeping food and water easily accessible.

Mareks is always something to consider if you have added any new birds to your flock recently. It usually strike in younger chickens though.

No recent additions of actual birds in the last few months, just some hatching eggs recently that this hen was never in contact with. I hatched some of my own eggs this summer and those chicks will be 10 weeks old soon; they're all doing fine and were hatched by a broody from my flock, so if flock has it then the chicks would have been exposed on day 1 via the broody. I know they are not old enough to be out of the woods yet. I did lose one other hen and my rooster a while back. The hen I lost seemed to have a tumor affecting her crop which made me a bit worried about Mareks since then, but as far as I can tell my rooster just ate a bunch of stuff he shouldn't have so I don't think that was related. I've never seen any of the ocular, skin, or paralysis symptoms except for this one bird. She has just shown me she can move her leg, but it obviously hurts a lot to do so I don't think it's truly paralyzed.

Chickens may injure themselves jumping to and from roosts, and sometimes a rooster can injure them when breeding. You could try some anti inflammatory medicine, such as aspirin 1/2 tablet of the 81 mg twice a day. B complex vitamins 1/4 to 1/2 tablet daily may help.

I have some of the 81mg aspirin. Not sure how I can get her to eat it...she is very friendly but from my past experiences trying to get her to eat calcium supplements, she will flail around if I try to put something in her mouth that she doesn't want to eat on her own. She's refusing everything except water at the moment despite having eaten well before that. Until yesterday she had been eating a bit of scrambled egg and banana daily along with her regular food, and I gather those have vitamin B. Maybe not enough though. I'll see if I can get some tablets for that.

 

[Eggcessive]

I would try placing the aspirin or B vitamins in a small bit of food, such as scrambled egg, cream cheese, or other.

 

[DonyaQuick]

I think I finally confirmed the point of injury and it's indeed close to where I originally thought. There is a dent in the ilium on her right side very close to the hip joint. The skin is also faintly purple there so that suggests it's the current problem. I discovered this because she likes it when I sift through her feathers and it seems to calm her in her injured state and get her to relax a bit. Tonight I was able to gently part the very dense feathers around her hips and compare both sides. I guess at least I can rule out reproductive causes and Mareks. I had been hoping it would be a hairline fracture though rather than a dent like it is. My main worry now is whether she's eating enough to recover.

I haven't been able to get her any aspirin yet. She was refusing food yesterday until late evening and then ate a good helping of canned tuna out of nowhere - but she ate it too fast for me to get a tablet ready and then she quit eating for the day. She only ate a a couple nibbles of feed mash this morning and now is refusing food again. I've tried scrambled egg, feed mash, berries, sweet corn, and a couple other things that she normally devours but no luck this evening. If I try put something in her mouth when it's open for any reason she just flicks her head and sends food bits across the room.

 

[Eggcessive]

I hope that she gets stronger and heals.

 

[DonyaQuick]

I'm sad to report that my poor girl passed away last night some time after I gave her a last pet, told her I loved her, and went to bed. I think the reason I saw purple color yesterday evening but not earlier may have been that internal bleeding was setting in. This morning the purple area was fainter but larger and kind of in a different place that spanned part of her abdomen. I am going to miss her a lot and today has been pretty tough since she was a lovely pet, but I already have kind of made peace with the fact that she wasn't going to be a long-lived bird. If it wasn't this, I think the egg-related issues would have eventually taken her given she had three other instances of serious laying problems this year where I felt like she got very close to the edge.

I do wonder if she had some kind of calcium uptake problem. I don't know if that's even a thing but it always seemed like I could never get her to eat enough of it to make good egg shells and she always seemed light for her size even though I don't think she was skinny or malnourished, so she may have had a more fragile skeleton than my others. I was not up to doing a necroscopy to find out for sure.

 

[Eggcessive]

I am very sorry for your loss. I have done a few necropsies on hens I have lost, just to see if it was something that I could actually see. But I understand if you don’t do it, too. Cornell is a good place to get one professionally in NY, but fairly expensive.