[featherhead]

AN ODD CASE... my chicken Peaches is poorly. She is a bantam wyandotte cross aged 4 months ish and she seems to not be growing up!! She is skin and bones, never putting on any weight or growing and yet she always has a full crop.. She is very slow moving, lays down a lot of the time and mostly has her eyes closed. Her legs are still pale pink like a chicks and her comb and wattle have not begun to grow. She breathes heavily and has almost completely lost her voice. Strangely, her tail always points down and never stops moving up and down a couple of centimeters as she breathes heavily. She sleeps a lot but joins in with dust baths and preening as usual.

However, she can run and jump if she needs to and I have watched her eat, drink and pass food as normal. She has been wormed recently (about a month ago with flubenvet) and I have taken her to two different vets. She recieved two injections of tylan then two weeks of soluble tylan.  Neither vet could diagnose what was wrong and they ruled out the basics - I was told her crop is fine, her respiratory sysem appears fine and no sign of mites.

She has been this way for about 8 weeks now and I wasn't expecting her to live this long.
Has anyone experienced anything similar to this? The vet said it's possible she has some internal problems and it's up to me if I want her put down..

[joyfull]

Is she laying yet?

[featherhead]

Not yet.

[AL Hathaway]

we had a stunted little cream legbar rooster he never grew at all and was the size of a 4 week old chick he lived to be 6 months and to be honest i wish i had the heart to cull him when he was a chick as we did everthing we could even vets a few times and they new nothing about why he was like that said he might grow  he never even crowed.

[New shoot]

I think its all about quality of life Featherhead.  If you think she is looking poorly then chances are she is not happy and maybe culling her would be the kindest option.  Your call - you know her best.

Best of luck either way