I thought I would share this, as it's something we didn't look out for or expect, and we have been keeping poultry for 25 years.
Yesterday we noticed our cockerel, Porthos, was behaving oddly and was not happy. He'd been checked out a few days before for parasites and we have pellets with Flubenvet on the way to worm them all ahead of new stock arriving.
We were shearing sheep all afternoon, and I realised that his behaviour was like that of a struck sheep - crouching down, then running fast to another place, usually next to one of his hens, then crouching again, then repeating that. So he was upended and found to have a mucky backside and a bad smell. Into a bowl of warm soapy water and the muck removed, then the cause was found -
inside his cloaca was a load of maggots.
Inside and not visible from the outside. Now all cleared out (I'm delighted to say that Mr F volunteered
) and a tiny bit of Crovect sprayed. He's now isolated for a while and seems to be much happier so
he recovers.
The two surprises I wanted to share are that he showed exactly the same behaviour as a struck sheep, and the other was that the maggots were inside and could not be seen from the exterior.
I hope this helps someone else.
Incidentally, Durham Hens has a good, simple symptoms and diagnosis page, from which I concluded that my little Speckledy Thomasina who died the other day had a heart attack - it was a very hot day and she was getting a bit older.