Green Poop in Chickens - Part 3

Green Poop in Chickens - the turn around

And then again sometimes there's nothing you can do - despite doing everything you can.  The green poop reappeared in Holly early last week and was quickly accompanied by lethargy, then extreme thirst and finally by death.  I had Holly booked in with the Vet on Friday morning and on Thursday I gave her a cuddle on the couch and placed her back in the pen for her final sleep with her best friend Alice.  The turn around was swift - good on Sunday, a little less so on Monday and by Tuesday evening I was getting concerned.  It seemed her liver wasn't able to bounce back after all.  I had continued her night medication and she was doing so well.  Eating mountains of food, preening, talking, harassing Alice each night.  However it seems that her mid Winter moult had placed far too much pressure on her immune system, consequently her liver function and the end came quickly.  

I found baby Holly in the sleeping hutch on Friday morning.  Alice was out and about eating and completely at ease with the situation.  It's worse when the other hens are left lonely and pining and this is not the case here.  It is all the same a total blow, leaving only 5 hens when last year we had 10.  Again due to the ILT virus that the bantam Wyandottes introduced we are unable to restock the flock.  I did find that when having lost a pet, the introduction of a new girl to care for made a real difference and also reminded me of why I continue to keep my girls.  As we can't buy anymore hens at this point, I can't help but be resentful about the hens out there that would have come to live with us, that we could have given such a happy, healthy and high quality life.  Seems grandly unfair. 

I miss Holly.  She was such a single minded, determined, brave and diligent little hen.  Always ahead of everyone else, the first to have a go and the least afraid.  My brother is on standby to take in Alice should she start moulting whilst we leave the girls behind for a holiday soon.  The first sign of wheaten coloured feathers exploding all over the chicken pen and Alice will be scooped up and taken into my brother's home for warmth and great food.  It really can be a fight to hang onto the girls and I never regret one moment, one dollar spent, the loss of sleep, the extra washing - I only wish I could do more for them.  

I only had Holly for a little over 14 months and I think she was barely 18 months in age when she passed away.  So short a time and yet I miss her enormously.  

Holly (AKA Hollilicious as I liked to call her)

Green Poop in Chickens - Part 2

Green Poop in Chickens - sometimes there's hope

I have been dosing Holly with prescription liver medication twice per day for one week now.  I am so happy to say that her poop is no longer vibrant green, she is eating regularly, stopped sleeping endlessly, started talking again and her colour is improving also.  

I really feel that without the medication that she would have been emaciated or dead by this time.  This seems to be the way, either the hen is taking great strides 3 or 4 days in or she has little hope. 

I am now cutting it back to once a day and I will continue this for another week.  

Holly is still really short on feathers and so will stay inside, on her heat pad and enjoying lots of fresh food.  I will put her back with the other hens once her new feathers have really come in - about 3 weeks from now.  

Here is Holly this evening.  She still has a few weeks to go but I am really pleased with her progress.  There is hope for chickens with liver failure issues. 

(Left to Right) Alice & Holly baking by the heater...again. 

Green Poop in Chickens

What does Green Poop in Chickens Mean?

It's not good news unfortunately.  Green poop in chickens has consistently proven to mean liver function issues in my experience.  It is also accompanied by a musty - damp and dusty type odor.  The poop stains a vibrant, emerald green on pale surfaces such as the white and cream towels my girls sleep on in their inside hutch.  

At the moment our buff Pekin hen Holly is producing green poop.  She is molting heavily too (it's right in the middle of Winter here) and she is consequently freezing and dropping a lot of weight trying to stay warm.  I have taken her out of the pen and brought her inside to stay in the lounge in a hutch.  In order to keep her warm she has a heating pad under the towel that's covering the hutch floor and we have the gas heater on every night and in the early morning to keep her as toasty as possible.  She's also having plenty of high protein mash and her water has electrolytes to keep her well hydrated.  She's also loving her silverbeet stalks - but that has nothing to do with why her poop is green.  She's also craving grit which is really typical of hens with unhealthy livers.  She eats mouthfuls of dirt on the sunny days when we put her outside.  I have a little bowl of grit in the hutch (finely ground up shells) and she tucks into this on and off through the day.  She's dropped quite a bit of weight and is very weak on her feet.  

All of the stress of the heavy molt in the cold weather has obviously assaulted her immune system and resulted in her liver struggling to keep up.  As with previous hens, I have started Holly on a very small dose of a liver medication that is actually designed for humans.  It is diluted in water in a syringe and she gets an 8th of a tablet twice a day.  Basically if Holly shows improvement in 4 or 5 days, she should keep going from strength to strength.  If there is not sign of improvement then it is likely that Holly will eventually need to be put to sleep.  

Holly is also very pale in the face, which again is another sign that her liver is not up to scratch. This is Holly several months ago - really red and healthy and below that is Holly this morning.  Very beige and pale (and gorgeous).

Holly - baking by the heater, July 2 2013

We will see how Holly is going this weekend.  Certainly I won't let Holly suffer but I am so hoping she will be one of the lucky girls to come through this. 

Aggressive Hen

Options for an Aggressive Hen

I contacted our Vet to ask about options to deal with an aggressive hen after our buff Pekin hen Holly, went a bit feral recently and pulled several hundred feathers from her sister Alice's neck and back of head.  Holly was at the very end of her feather cycle, on the cusp of a full molt and became very aggressive in the last couple of weeks. 

We ended up separating Alice and keeping her in her own hutch inside for the week to break Holly out of her feather plucking behaviour.  Putting Holly inside would have been a disaster as she was so wound up and kooky that she would have run riot and screamed all day.  I do admit to love having my Alice in the house as she is such a sociable and sweet, little hen.  She chats away and comes into the kitchen to preen and watch us making breakfast.  If we move away she calls non stop until we come back to her.  But back in the hutch she settles in beautifully and relaxes completely. 

Hormone Therapy

So anyway, I was worried that if Holly did not calm down that Alice would be permanently needing her own bedroom.  I called the Vet and got some really interesting news about an option for Holly - a hormone implant.  Basically Holly could have a series of fortnightly injections or a one off implant placed under the skin between the tops of her wings (near the base of her neck).  It would be effective for between 3 - 6 months.  I figured it was definitely worth a go if Holly did not start molting and calm down. 

In the mean time we assigned Holly to our Jack Russell to keep her behaviour in check. 

However in less than a week Holly started molting.  She lost so many feathers she was shaking in a puffed up ball and looking miserable.  As Holly definitely has the ILT virus, she has been brought inside to keep her warm and well fed.  The worst thing for a hen with ILT is to be skinny, cold, losing weight and stuck out in Winter weather.  She was miserable and not eating for several days and then when her feathers stopped falling out, her appetite began to return.  She's stopped attacking Alice who comes inside for sleepovers and has gone from a 10 to a 2 on the crazy-ometer.  Just crazy enough to be her usual, slightly obsessive self. 

If anyone has tried the hormone implant for their hen I'd surely be enormously interested to find out the results.  

Holly, this morning - keeping warm, suburbhen style. 

 That's love by the way, I don't spoil my chickens...much. 

Feather Picking

Feather Picking in Chickens

Seems we have a feather picker in the flock.  When the girls came out of the sleeping hutch on Tuesday morning, I noticed that Alice's head was much lighter in appearance and upon inspection found that someone had plucked a large amount of feathers off her head and neck. 

Alice is a really gentle and submissive hen.  I have noticed our Silkie hen Farrah pecking away at her face whilst Alice just submits, frozen on the spot.  So to prevent us coming home to a bald birdie, we put Alice in a hutch in the lounge for the day until we could work out what was going on.

Yesterday Alice went out in to the garden with the other hens and took herself back into the pen after a few hours and settled in.  I watched her for a while and her sister Holly sidled up.  Holly loomed over the top of Alice, whilst Alice froze underneath.  Sure enough, Holly began to pull at Alice's neck feathers until she soon pulled one out.

Straight into the pen and I picked up Alice and took her back inside.  The problem I have is that Alice does quite well inside, settles into her hutch happily and loves pottering around the kitchen.  Where as Holly freaks out and demands to be released from the hutch by calling loudly and consistently and then poos everywhere out of anxiety.  With Alice inside, when she does go out with the other girls for some garden time, the rest of the flock act aggressively towards her to punish her for disappearing. 

The other issue with Holly is she is fairly single minded, predictable and very one directional in her orientation.  She is very focussed and not easily distracted, so she thinks it's just weird when I move her away from something I don't want her to be involved in and she just tries to go straight back to what she was doing in the first place.  Holly is also a bit aggressive at present, as she seems to be at the peak of her health and could do with a good feather moult and a drop in her crazy-cuckoo hormones.  We are thinking we may take her to the Vet for a hormone injection to chill her out if she does not start to moult in the next week or two. 

This is a real frustration as the girls have masses of space (usually feather picking is prompted by confined living conditions) and with the girls in good health at the moment, we really thought we could just enjoy them and not have to nurse anyone back in the house. 

Here you can see Alice's neck all exposed.  The back of her head has been thinned out and in doing so exposed some ingrown feathers which I teased out with my fingers.  That would be the only positive I can see from Holly's bad behaviour so far.  Having said that it is lovely to have our little girl in the house again.  We keep looking in the hutch and seeing Alice preening and bustling about and it is so heart warming.  Loving have her in the kitchen in the morning.  We had Rosie in last night for a sleep over with her.  It's unlimited gorgeousness. 

Frankie Magazine Article Review - Feeling Clucky by Eleanor Venables

Frankie Magazine - May/ June Edition

I read an article in the May/ June edition, Issue 53 of Frankie magazine - Feeling Clucky by Eleanor Venables.  It's a half page article so it's not intended to be a complete guide to keeping chickens in a suburban setting.  It's a short piece to encourage city dwellers to consider becoming hen parents for company, eggs, gobbling of kitchen scraps, garden maintenance and for something a bit different.  Unfortunately the article drags up some standard clichés about hens and that just annoys me.  The article is meant to encourage people to consider keeping hens, however it also presents chickens in a less than positive light.

 Stupid?

Whilst recommending that chicken owners offer their flock a sturdy water bowl, one that can not easily be tipped over by a pair of roosting feet, the author uses this topic to segue-way into a slight about how apparently unintelligent chickens are.  She references a story that a headless chicken once lived for 18 months.  The story comes from an event more than half a century ago, where allegedly someone tried to cull a chicken by cutting its head off, did not do a proper job and so they left part of the head in tact.  Thankfully (if the story is in fact at all true anyway) the bird did not succumb to infection and die a hideous and prolonged death but apparently lived for a number of months afterwards.  The author uses this vile tale to highlight how chickens are "not the smartest of animals".  Can you imagine how upset people would be if a dog sustained a severe head injury from an attempt to exterminate it but yet managed to survive and stay alive for months afterward?  It would be this enormous mixture of outrage at the person who mutilated it and celebration at the marvellous dog.  But for a chicken it's assumed that pain and discomfort are either not an issue or of no consequence as it's 'just a chicken', they hold no value anyway so who should care - let's make a joke out of a badly wounded bird and as this author suggests, chickens have minimal intellect, this story backs it up.  I have had some great chickens with long term memories, problem solving skills and gorgeous and varied natures and others who are simple, straight to the point and predictable.  Much like people there is no such thing as 'you've known one you've known them all'.  They are varied, unique and you never know what you're going to find once you get to know them.  Certainly I'd trade the most difficult and unusual chicken for the most difficult and unusual human every time. 

Nasty?

Then there's the description of a rooster.  I do hate generalisations that put everything (especially an animal for heavens sakes) in one box and determine it to be abhorrent.  The author describes roosters to be nasty, having mad, beady little eyes and being known for their aggression.  Some roosters are very aggressive and a real handful.  This is often a combination of genetics (some breeds are particularly skittish and difficult) and a lack of frequent, caring, human contact from a young age.  However the few that I have purchased (hoping they were hens) I have had from tiny chicks, handled them every day, treated them with great care and respect, have grown to be spectacular gentle-men.  I've never been silly enough to tick my neighbours off with pre sunrise crowing and more or less beg the local council to come confiscate them, by keeping the boys in the long run.  Roosters keep the hens beautifully in check, lower the petty squabbles amongst the girls and nurture and protect the hens to such an extent that they often run themselves down.  They are amazing, gorgeous and might I add completely innocent animals who are doing nothing more than following their inbuilt instincts - crowing to announce the day, determine territory, bring the flock together and protecting their girls from any perceived threat.  
If you saw something unknown, untrusted, 40 times your size coming at your family, wouldn't you try to protect them? 

Poorly Researched Dietary Advice

As for the advice about feeding chickens, not so good.  The author says that "aside from onions and garlic, most veggies and fruit are great for them".  Garlic is considered a go-to as a natural remedy for pest control and a general tonic for good health.  My girls get an occasional spoon of garlic granules for a little treat and when their father gives them a cheese free hamburger, they all enjoy a little sliver of onion.  I don't think any reasonably brained person would think of raising an onion and garlic fed hen (imagine that on the packet of a frozen chook next to the grain fed choices) as it's clearly not intended to be a staple component of their diet.  I don't remember evolutionary history being full of chickens frolicking in the garlic fields, guzzling onion rings for dessert.  As an occasional aspect in small amounts, there is absolutely nothing wrong with onions and garlic in a chicken's diet.  I get curry about once a fortnight and there is always plenty left over for the girls the next day.  This is certainly no way to take a short cut to curried eggs!  
What I would say about something not to feed chickens is that feeding them huge armfuls of lettuce (such as you can find in a lot of produce departments on-floor bins that people have peeled off the lettuce heads).  Lettuce has almost no nutritional value at all and in large amounts it leads to chickens having really watery droppings and therefore soggy bum feathers to attract flies and burn the skin. Feeding a few leaves between several hens should be no problem amongst a variety of other food choices.  We feed our girls silver-beet as it has some great nutritional elements.  It's also really easy to grow if you're inclined. 
I don't mean to be intentionally picky to the author but there is no such breed as a 'Silky Bantam'.  The term is Silkie and they are not bantams.   They are also not a chicken you would buy for their fabulous laying prowess as the article indicates.  They do indeed "look awesome", are generally easy to handle and tame-up well with regular calm and gentle human contact.  They do not have "scrawny feet", they have feathered feet which I have had people gush over for years in excitement and amazement.  

I wish that if someone writes an article to encourage people to keep chickens that it be factual, fair and do what it sets out to do - encourage, celebrate and spotlight chickens.  

Sorry Eleanor Venables but in the immortal words of Kath Day-Knight, "It was good but I don't agree".  

Rosa and Farrah (Silkie hen) - beautiful, brilliant and beloved.  

Dermatitis in Chickens

Dermatitis in Chickens - Holly

I have noticed flaky, dry skin on the right hand side of Holly's head and around her right ear.  There is a little on her left side but it's minimal.  She's not scratching, yawning constantly or rubbing her head so it's not uncomfortable for her.  I was a little worried it may be mites but as there was very little dry build up in her ear, the dryness was restricted to one side and no scratching, it seemed very unlikely. None of the other girls were exhibiting the same issue either and mites are usually really catching.   
The Vet felt that it was likely to be dermatitis or similar.  Possibly due to a vitamin deficiency (zinc perhaps) so gave Holly an injection to counteract this and said I should see a difference in 5 days or so.  He said although it may be due to a reaction with something from her environment, it would seem unlikely, as what would she be in contact with which just touched the right side of her head and not the rest of her?  Confident me agreed wholeheartedly and as Holly is in no pain, I was not too worried for her.  
So the next morning I was in the pen with her and I picked her up and to give her an encouraging cuddle.  I was dotting kisses on the right side of her head and telling her how sweet she was when it hit me - I was kissing the right side of her head!  I always kiss the right side of her head.  Me, smothered in lip balm.  I'm a cosmetic testing monster.  
I have checked Holly's head today, four days after the visit and her face certainly has a lot less dry patches.  At this point I don't know if it's just a coincidence, the injection or the kissing removal. 
So Holly is now kiss free.  Well, I do admit to eying off her wing as a future site of affection.  This morning I found Holly napping on the sand in the pen.  Everyone else who was out (Holly's sister Alice was on the nest working on an egg) was preening all around her and she was snoozing away with her head under her wing.  Hens sleeping with their head under their wing, especially out in the open when they're healthy and well, is very unusual. 
 

Holly - Sunday 18th May 2013.  Sleeping soundly. 

Holly, being watched over by Jewel.