# Sickly Chicken.



## Ruth'schickens (Jun 18, 2020)

I am looking for some advice! 
I am debating taking one of my hens to an emergency vet... the cost is large but I am afraid she may have an illness that could spread to my other hens. I started with a flock of 12. I bought them online from My Pet Chicken. Within a year one of the hens died without any apparent symptoms. Then just 2 weeks ago we had another hen die, she stopped eating and drinking and had runny, foamy poop caked on her feathers that we washed carefully a couple of times. She eventually was not able to move and now we have another hen with feces stuck on her feathers and she is very lethargic.


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## robin416 (Sep 8, 2013)

I'm so sorry, for some reason your post didn't show up. I had no idea it existed until someone else stumbled across it. 

Foamy droppings often is an indicator of internal parasites. It could also be other bacterial infections. A vet would probably be the best bet for any kind of diagnosis.


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## Ruth'schickens (Jun 18, 2020)

We took her to the vet. They found that she had a mass of some kind in her abdomen. We could have taken her to UConn to have them preform a necropsy on her but we decided we just didn't want to do that.


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## Sylie (May 4, 2018)

I'm so sorry. This is hard. I hope that it isn't some form of genetic thing in all of the birds from MyPetChicken. Personally I try to stay away from them, the entire site. Something just doesn't sit right with me about them, I've heard others have had problems with chicks from there too. 

I hope you have better luck with the rest of them!


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## Ruth'schickens (Jun 18, 2020)

Thank you. So far the others seem too okay. But I do have a hen that insists on sitting on eggs and has been doing this for a while, any advice on what I could do to get her to stop.


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## robin416 (Sep 8, 2013)

Good luck with that. Being broody is hormone driven and until those hormones switch off again she's going to drive you crazy trying to get her to stop. Blocking her from the coop or nest. Moving the nest. Put her in a cage to keep her away from the nest are all things that have been tried with some success.

Can you tell which hens are laying and which are not? I'm wondering if the one you took to the vet was internally laying and that was the mass they picked up on.


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