# Looks bad



## jennifer (May 14, 2013)

This hen just dosent look as good as all my others! She has feathers that seem to be thinning. She also has tiny black specks in her feathers.. Almost seems like a bug or mite? So small I can't tell. All the other hens look amazing? Any suggestions.? She also dosent seem to clean her rear at all?









What do you think?


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## Bee (Jun 20, 2013)

She certainly doesn't look too good right now...have you examined the skin around her vent at night? That's when parasites are most active and you may be able to see them under a good light. I posted a pic somewhere on here awhile ago of what mite egg clusters look like on the feathers and also lice egg sacs also. You should be able to see the mites and lice crawling on the skin around the vent, on the abdomen, etc. 

Her bottom looks pretty messy so you can look at that too and see if she is having gleet issues? Gleet is another name for a condition of trush...really foul smelling drainage/feces from the bowels caused by the overgrowth of the wrong kind of yeast in the digestive tract.

She could also be suffering from an overload of intestinal parasites. How old is she? Is she laying well? In molt?


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## GratefulGirl (Sep 10, 2012)

Hopefully Bee will hop on here shortly but could it be gleet? Can you examine her vent to see if she has a smelly discharge? You may have to this at night & trim away some of the feathers to also check for lice eggs.


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## GratefulGirl (Sep 10, 2012)

There you are Bee yay! Hope you are having a great day!


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## Bee (Jun 20, 2013)

I am! I hope you are as well. It's been raining all day and making it perfect for napping here. Nice and cool, perfect temps, quiet and reverent Sunday afternoon. My favorite! 

My first experience with gleet came from a bird that was not mine and came from a pretty bad place. She was beautiful and physically healthy looking, laying every day and was the fattest bird I'd ever processed in my entire life..and that's saying a lot from all the hundreds of birds..and she was a BA, which are not prone to obesity. 

But..she had the wrong conformation and her vent had sort of an overbite, so to speak, which left her vent open most of the time...I don't know if this contributed to her problem or not. I'd never had such a thing in any of my birds. 

I dealt with it for awhile and tried a few things, but did not wish to use medicines of any kind, so I finally culled her. I'm glad I did because I think she would have always had problems with that leaky vent and the resulting feces around her butt all the time. Her vent was always raw and bleeding a little because it would crack at the corners when she laid and I just couldn't get it healed up. 

I've never seen the type of fat deposits that bird had! She was fat in places chickens normally are not fat and super fat in the places where they normally are fat...it was pretty gross. But, at least the gleet wasn't affecting her condition or performance...just looked and smelled bad and left her with a sore bottom. 

I've got some pretty good pics of it all if the OP is interested and if this is indeed gleet, although it probably won't help solve the problem...usually the birds have to be put on some antifungal meds.


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## jennifer (May 14, 2013)

I adopted her about 4 months ago... She looked better after about 3 weeks here. Now not so good I kept her separate for about a month and she looked good them! Now not so... Is gleet something that I need to be worried about. My husband may be getting gleet! Lol ! Teasing


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## lilychicken (Dec 29, 2012)

Just clean up your chicken, and see if there is anything that might be harmful. I would especially clean around the vent area. See what you can find. Does anything look suspicious? Do you see anything hinting at a symptom? I agree , I would think it to be gleet. Sorry, I'm not giving the best answers at the moment. I don't know that much about this, but I'm just giving suggestions.


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## Bee (Jun 20, 2013)

jennifer said:


> I adopted her about 4 months ago... She looked better after about 3 weeks here. Now not so good I kept her separate for about a month and she looked good them! Now not so... Is gleet something that I need to be worried about. My husband may be getting gleet! Lol ! Teasing


 If yer husband and yer chicken wind up with the same malady, I'd be having some serious talks with him.

Get that chicken up turned and take a good, clear pic of her bum, take a whiff and see if it smells worse than regular chicken poop, dig in there and see if there are mites on the skin...all of that is going to be a yucky job but someone has to do it!

Here's a few pics of hens with gleet that I've found online....










Here's a link to one person's advice about gleet...

http://www.backyardchickens.com/a/vent-gleet-aka-nasty-chicken-butt










Another person's advice for it...



> Treatment:
> -Bathe the chicken to help cleanse and soothe the affected area.
> -Nystatin liquid suspension provided by the vet to be given orally is very effective for 7-10 days.
> -Anti-fungal creams like those used for athlete's feet applied topically twice daily to the vent area for 14 days.
> ...


The chicken I culled...and her gleet butt. I had trimmed the feathers below the vent and had washed off the worst of it, but this was a week after that. This pic was taken as she is laying on her back, so it's upside down.


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## jennifer (May 14, 2013)

Thankyou! I will fix her up tomorrow! Good lord. Poor gal


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