Pearl, the Miracle Hen,




Pearl, one of my Delawares is truly a miracle hen, yesterday she layed an egg, the first real egg with a normal shell for over a year. She was extremely sick just a few weeks ago and had lost most of her weight, she was just bones and feathers. Last summer the rooster had done a lot of damage to their feathers, and Pearl and Bianca's feathers never grew back well over the winter when everybody else was molting. Sometimes this summer I learned about an antibiotic called Denagard that treats a common infection in layers that leads to symptoms that I saw in some of my hens, so I used that and almost instantly their feathers grew back. But after that I had a few hens getting diarrhea, so I treated everybody for that, when all was well, I used the Denagard again because I had read that it has to be repeated. Some time after that I notice that Pearl had feathers missing on her neck, I had no idea why, and then at some point I noticed her crop was distended and wasn't going down over night. So I treated for impacted crop but saw no improvement. Her appetite remained good, but the crop was just huge. I took her to the vet and he thought it may be thrush and recommended vinegar or copper sulfate. So I tried the vinegar in the water, but had no success. I was encouraged that she continued to eat, despite the huge crop, but I knew at some point she would crash. Then her appetite decreased and I became rather desperate, surgery for the crop was out of reach, plus I wasn't sure if it was really impacted or what else was going on. Then I read some more about thrush and realized that the swollen crop can be a symptom. So I asked my vet for Nystatin. The day I got it I had 2 more hens with symptoms so I started treating all 3, two of the recovered quickly, Pearl's recovery was very slow and I often felt like giving up. She wasn't eating or drinking, so I really had to force fluids and some nutrients into her together with the medicine, she never cooperated, it was a fight each time. I finally noticed the size of her crop decreasing, it took about another week until her crop returned to a normal size, she had lost just about every little bit of fat she had and she has been eating like crazy ever since. I don't remember her ever being as active and lively as she is now, she follows me around, she shows up when I use the garden hose because she knows I might uncover something with bugs under it, she chases everbody else away from anything edible. She is gaining back weight and for her to lay an egg was simply a miracle that I didn't expect, but I caught her in the nestbox with the egg still wet, and it did have one end looking just a bit uneven, which is what her eggs used to be like before she stopped laying. Unfortunately her sister Bianca got sick again a week ago, diarrhea and mushy crop, so she is in the sick ward now (laundry room) and on Nystatin, after a week of force feeding, she has started eating again the last few days and has started foraging with the flock the last 3 days, first very slowly, but today I saw her pecking at another hen who came too close to the food, so she is on the mend, I just have to keep up the Nystatin longer this time.
Next thing on the list is to worm everybody with something that treats multiple internal parasites, not that I have ever seen any evidence of parasites, but I think it is a good practice with free ranging hens to worm them occasionally to make sure that they are not infested and suffering poor health due to parasites.