[ellied]

I have a bluebelle who regularly sounds wheezy, tho it clears after a few days and then happens again.  I often see her eating long grass and yesterday she had a piece hanging from her beak so I am guessing she is not doing herself any favours and partly impacting her crop with wet grass and then clearing it? 

They are free range but after a foxy week (lost 4 in 10 days from those that wandered up the field at dawn) have been putting them in the pen from 6pm-6am approx with their evening corn ration, with grit available, and it's a gravelly surface so they scratch for the grain until roosting time quite happily other than 2 that fly out and go back to brooding a single egg after it clearly isn't going to hatch!

I can't easily catch her but sometimes could in the morning while she's got her head under the pellet hopper and can't see me leaning down.  I've done it twice and the crop wasn't smelly or hard, but if I do it frequently I imagine I won't get her again!  I have tylan, I think, and could dose the water in there for all of them, but if it is grass rather than a resp infection then I'm dosing unnecessarily as well as healthy hens that haven't the symptom - and also not dosing 2 that aren't in the pen long enough to drink there.

Any thoughts?  She's bright, alert, comes running at corn time and seems to be laying - thought she might not be til I found a dozen in a stash in the nettles I pulled yesterday   Leave her to the bad habit tho she looks like a 30s acress with a cigarette holder dangling from her mouth   Or something to balance the grass beyond layers and corn and grit that might be popular enough to take voluntarily?

[chrismahon]

Some of ours started eating very long grass and pooing a lot of long knotted strands. I put it down to needing worming so did. They have stopped doing it as much. Whilst they nibble at grass all the time, sometimes they eat very long firm strands and I think it is a natural worming mechanism.


The wheezing isn't necessarily an infection in this case. It sounds like an allergy, because we've got a Leghorn doing the same and antibiotics made no difference at all. After heavy rain she stopped and when it went dry she started again.

[ellied]

Thanks.  They had over a week of Flubenvet Marriages layer pellets a couple months ago (late April and I kept feeding til they'd got through a 20kg sack) so shouldn't be worms. 

I was looking dubiously at a minor red mite infestation but just the one hen and then saw the grass hanging aswell as noticing her eating it a few times.  Allergy is interesting idea.  I'll test the rain/dry connection.  Do you know what yours is allergic to? 

[chrismahon]

Unfortunately we don't Ellied. Could be anything around here. But in my experience developing an allergy means there is another underlying weakness in the bird. In this case I think it is a heart problem.