goldiechicken193
Hatching
- May 12, 2020
- 3
- 4
- 9
As the title says, one chicken out of my 7 has had diarrhea and a dirty butt for several weeks. She is a 2 year old Golden Comet and the only Comet in the flock. She is small by nature but has definitely lost weight during this time frame. Her breast bone is very prominent. I have treated the flock for coccidiosis. I have given this chicken 2 doses of dewormer (SafeGuard equine) spaced 10 days apart. The entire ~2 month span, she has been observed to eat and drink. I’ve had her in isolation for about a week after it was clear she no longer wants to live in the coop. She pecks at chicken feed but doesn’t eat much of it. Still loves sunflower seeds and little suet ball-type chicken treats. Will eat scrambled eggs. She started roosting under the coop about 2 weeks ago. Once I gave her an isolation pen in my basement, she stands at the basement door to be let in to sleep or chooses to roost somewhere on my back porch. During the day she wanders around alone or stands on the back porch looking in through the storm door hoping to be fed treats. She pecks at the dogs when they get in her way. She’s still perky and will fight me if she doesn’t like what I’m doing. Over the past 2 or 3 days, the weather has warmed. I thought her stools were improving and more solid after the dewormer, but over the past 2 days it has seemed worse. Tonight I flipped her over and discovered a butt covered in fly maggots. She immediately went into a bath, followed by another bath. There is an open wound the size of a golf ball below her vent. I picked maggots out of the wound with hemostats until I couldn’t see any more, but I know there are more and she will have another bath tomorrow. I feel terrible because I didn’t keep her cleaner. Honestly, these are my first chickens and I learned about flystrike tonight. I think this developed in the past week. She has a decent sized skin erosion which makes me think the maggots have been there a while. I hope to be able to heal her butt ulcer from the flystrike but I’m still stumped on the diarrhea, which obviously led to the flystrike. I think it’s time to involve a vet if she can turn the corner with the butt ulcer. I’ve read countless posts and articles about chicken diarrhea and I’ve done what they have suggested. Any ideas before I start looking for a chicken vet?
