Silver has a problem

I am writing this in hindsight because over the last few days all my time has been taken up with trying to treat Silver. The first thing I noticed was that Silver looked hunched. She then stood up and started twisting her neck. She was due to lay and she had laid one soft shelled egg a couple of weeks ago so I thought that she was struggling to get an egg laid.

Silver then went to the nest box. She laid her egg and it had a good shell. I thought she would bounce back after laying but she still didn’t look good. She was going to the water but I wasn’t seeing her eating.

The following day Silver still didn’t look good. At one point she was stretched out in the sun with her eyes closed.

Silver was either looking like this or standing upright and twisting her neck. At this point I knew we needed to go to the vet. Luckily I phoned the vet and got an appointment right away.

I had put her symptoms in an internet search and the only thing it was coming up with was wry neck which can be a lack of vitamin E and can be cured with vitamin E/Selinium. It seemed unlikely as I have been putting vitamins in the water and I checked them and they include vitamin E. Apparently the Selinium helps the vitamin E to be absorbed.

The vet stood Silver on the floor to see how she moved and she looked normal. The vet weighed her, she then checked her heart which was strong and her temperature which was normal She checked her vent which was clean and no egg stuck, which I knew, as she had just laid. She felt her breast and there was no fluid and checked her eyes and beak which were all clear. She said she was skinny which proved, as I thought, she wasn’t eating.

The vet said all her vital signs seemed perfectly normal. At that moment Silver closed her eyes and starting falling forward in a sort of rocking movement. The vet said she could see something was very wrong but she was at a loss. Silver didn’t twist her neck while at the vets but the vet took video on her phone of Silver falling forward with her eyes closed. She said she would call her colleague and send the video as he is an expert on birds and exotics. He said he would call her back.

The vet gave me a liquid pain killer to put in her beak once a day and an antibiotic in tablet form to put a quarter in her beak twice a day. She said to order the vitamin E/Selinium from Amazon as the vet doesn’t stock it. That came the following day and is a jell which needs a pea sized bit to her beak once a day. I know she hasn’t got a blockage because the tablet is going down. I was worried as I had never given a tablet before but the vet said pop it in her beak and she will swallow it which turned out to be true.

In the mean time the vets colleague called back and he was also at a loss. The vet said to separate Silver from the flock because as we don’t know what it is we don’t know if it’s contagious.

This meant speeding up mixing the flock. The new girls had been with the flock all day without any problem and they had now had their month on growers so I changed all the feeders to fifty/fifty growers and layers except for Silver’s dish. I put Silver in the smaller part of the run and opened up the bottom of the run so the new girls could escape any chasing.

In between times Silver has moments of seeming normal and yesterday she again laid an egg so it’s definitely not an egg problem. We can’t eat the eggs because of the antibiotic so I am feeding them back to Silver.

The vet said to give Silver scrambled egg to try to get her eating which I did. Silver has been having a little scrambled egg and a few sunflower hearts but that’s all she is eating. I tried mash and chopped tomato as well but she will only eat a little egg. I know that if she stops eating we are in real trouble.

We have been giving her all three med’s to her beak. At least she is very easy to handle. I have done more research on wry neck and now don’t think it is that as I have watched video and with wry neck their head is lolling to one side or facing upside down. I can’t find anything about twisting the neck. We are at a loss. All we can do is continue doing everything we are doing. I will try calling the farm she came from today to see if they have any advice.

In other news the new girls mixed really well. They have followed the flock into the chicken shed both nights. They settled in the corner rather than perching but they haven’t been used to perching at night. I moved them up to the perch and they stayed there. I am sure they will get the hang of it in their own time.

Silver settled on the shelf in the shelter and I moved her into the little coup. Silver has moments of looking better and I think she is on the mend then she relapses again. Only time will tell if she comes through this but we are throwing everything at it.