UPDATE 8/24/2024: I am still crying as I write this. Unfortunately, everything we tried was unsuccessful. When we found her today, she couldn't even use her legs or her neck really, she was just flailing around without any kind of coordination. We had to make the most heartwrenching decision...
I can't, no. Then again, I likely wouldn't be able to tell very well as I'm not terribly accustomed to doing a lot of crop things. I'm going to keep feeding her eggs to see if that gets something done. Wish me luck!
Thank you. My husband and I were devastated when we found out.
I would send pictures of the x-ray, but the vet is closed until Monday. They're unable to do crop surgery and the few hospitals around with the capability to do so were either ridiculously shady or told us to just euthanize her and...
Hi, thank you for replying! Yes, she is still a pretty attentive mama hen after all this, but with how she was before, it tracks. She would attack any other bird that got close to her babies. The metal is still in her crop, towards the bottom if I'm not mistaken. The vet was going to send copies...
Much the same as my last post on here. My mama hen was stumbling around and I thought it was an injury of some kind. Turns out she swallowed two little bits of metal somehow and it's poisoning her. No vet has been any help whatsoever except for the first one we went to, but they can't extract...
Do you notice any swelling in her thigh?If so, it might be an upper leg injury. If not, there are several other possible causes. You might need to check to be sure she hasn't accidentally swallowed any metal, because when some metals break down in the crop (iron and lead are two big ones), they...
Thank you! Some quick updates for you, lone commenter.
First, because of her condition, a predator got into the coop the next night and killed 3 out of 4 of the babies. Two were just completely gone, and the third was found on the other side of the coop stretched out longways. We think it was a...
She was sitting for about a week, we shoved some chicks under her so she wouldn't starve herself to death trying to incubate nothing. We've had them about two weeks now I think? Maybe three! The chicks (which we call the nuggets) are about a month old as far as we know, still just little fluffs...
So one of our hens, a mama of four beautiful babies, has suddenly started to stumble around (just today). In observing her, it seems like she's leaning too far out on her left hip and it's causing her to fall on that side. Other than that (and some butt feather loss), she's not displaying any...
From what I've observed, this is just regular chick play behavior. They're just having a grand ol' time! As long as they don't single anyone out or peck them to death, it's perfectly fine.
20% all flock feed, corn, wheat, and bugs as regular treats, dandelion greens and other fruits and veggies as we can afford them, and some oyster shells they can free feed on. They've been going nuts for the oyster shells lately.
I have never encountered a more interesting and challenging flock than the one I and my husband currently have. When we first got them, we were concerned about cannibalism because one of our birds killed a flockmate by pecking at her tail. That's stopped entirely now, but now my birds have begun...
Update as of 11-17-23: We had to move this bird to true solitary confinement with no possibility of interacting with her flockmates because she was pulling at her flockmates' feathers through the bars and showing no signs of improvement. Not only this, but one of our other babies has started...
Here is the link to the other thread. Thanks for the warm welcome! https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/my-baby-chicken-is-displaying-cannibalistic-tendencies.1603971/