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Nick&Trish

Horrible Dilemma - Please Help.

By Nick&Trish, in Chickens, Eggs and Hatching

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Nick&Trish Chicken Eggspert

Nick&Trish

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We took Geraldine to see the Head vet today. She's gone up in weight from 1.85 Kg when she was poorly to 2.05 Kg today (her normal weight is around 2.5 Kg), so we're making progress. The vet had found a small lump near her liver during the last examination, and wasn't sure whether this was a tumour or a capsulised infection, but the lump seems to have got a bit smaller, so hopefully it's the latter and the latest antibiotics are doing their stuff, penetrating the capsule, and killing the infection.

 

To be on the safe side we will continue with the antibiotics for another month, and we'll also continue to crop-feed her twice a day to try to build her up to her normal weight. However, she is eating for England at the moment - everything we put in front of her gets gobbled up - so she's doing her bit too.

 

She has also gone back to being properly naughty, and has reclaimed her position as boss hen, so far as we can tell. She is also a lot more difficult to catch now, and weaves around like a fly half when we try to corner her for a crop feed, so we have to resort to bribery with food to get her back into the Eglu in order to catch her.

 

So, at the moment things are looking positive. But we'll have to keep a close eye on her progress to make sure she doesn't start going downhill again.

 

Nick and Trish

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Nick&Trish Chicken Eggspert

Nick&Trish

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Well it's been a while, so we thought we'd give a quick update.

 

Geraldine is still with us. We are still giving her antibiotics each morning and evening, and have another two weeks to go. We'll be taking her down to the vet for another check up just before the antibiotics run out, and hope that the lump will have gone down sufficiently for her to stop taking them. We stopped the anti-inflammatories a while back, and she hasn't had a vitamin B12 jab for over a week, but seems fine without it.

 

We are still giving her supplementary feed through a tube twice a day, although we are now cutting down on the amount and hope to stop altogether once she's properly back up to her fighting weight. She now weighs 2.48 Kg, so she's almost there.

 

She's very bright, still eating for England, and seems like her old self, but we won't relax until we've taken her back to the vet. We're hoping for positive news, but can't take that for granted.

 

Yesterday she seemed a little less active, but she laid an egg today :roll: which might explain that. We wish she hadn't bothered as we want her to put all her energy into her recovery, but we're taking it as a positive sign. We saw her tucking into oyster shell too, which she hasn't done since she fell ill, so hopefully that's another good sign.

 

Victoria, who gets to share all the treats that we've been giving to Geraldine to build her up, is now the size of an aircraft carrier. If she gets any bigger she'll have trouble getting into the Eglu!

 

We'll give you another update in a couple of weeks, or if anything changes before then.

 

Nick and Trish

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Nick&Trish Chicken Eggspert

Nick&Trish

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We thought we'd give you the final chapter in this saga. Unfortunately, Geraldine didn't make it and had to be put to sleep yesterday. She was properly better at one stage, and she was off the antibiotics and back to being her old self (i.e. naughty) but after 3-4 weeks without the antibiotics she started getting lethargic again and the lump, which had by now been identified as a swollen liver, had started to grow.

 

We put her back onto the antibiotics, but this time they didn't work - the bacteria had probably had time to build up a resistance - so we tried another antibiotic to no avail, then another, and another - by which time she had stopped eating so we were back to tube feeding again.

 

The last antibiotic available seemed promising at first, as she made a little rally, but eventually it was clear that she was slowly going downhill as she would spend much of her time resting between spurts of activity.

 

Yesterday morning we found that her crop hadn't emptied from the previous evening's feed, so it was back to the vet who confirmed that all her systems were closing down, and there was no hope. We therefore took the difficult decision to have her put to sleep, as we couldn't just watch her fade away over the next few days.

 

All very sad, but at least we managed to give her 3-4 months of good-quality life that she wouldn't have otherwise had. Victoria seems OK on her own at the moment, and may actually be more active now, as she was spending a lot of time keeping Geraldine company while she was resting.

 

Obviously we'll keep a close eye on her and give her lots of fuss, and if we feel that she's lonely we'll consider getting her some company - although we've been advised that at her age (4.5 years) she might find younger hens traumatic and get picked on. We'll just have to see how it goes.

 

Nick and Trish

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Henhathnofury Frequent Layer

Henhathnofury

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It's lovely that you gave her that extra time. I can relate fully as I just nursed a girl after a prolapse, but gave her a couple of weeks to dustbathe and lie in the sun. So sorry that she died. Such a shame. Poor you. Take care of yourself and remember that you did a brilliant job throughout....

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