Chicken trouble...

[Cheryl]

I have a hen that is having trouble keeping her balance.  She will be walking then almost sit down on her bottom.  She gets up and will walk normally for a few steps but eventually she will lean to one side and fall completely over.  She started doing this yesterday.  She's been molting and looks worse than my other hens.  She still has an appetite and no other signs of illness.  Everyone else is normal.  I've googled this and can't find anything that fits her description.  It's almost like she has an inner ear problem that is affecting her balance.

Any ideas?

[greyhoundgirl]

I'm sorry to hear this, Cheryl.  Poor girlie.  Hoping she gets back to normal soon.  Does she free range at all?  Did she eat anything different yesterday?

[Cheryl]

She's free ranging right now.  I'm keeping a close eye on her.  At times, she'll walk a long way without any stumbles at all then all of a sudden lean over and fall on her side.  If I'd never seen it happen I wouldn't know anything was wrong with her.  She's eating normally, scratching in the dirt and all.  Just to look at her when she's not falling you'd never know she had a problem.  All of my hens have eaten the same thing so I can't figure it out.

[greyhoundgirl]

The reason I asked was that I was doing some reading on Backyard Chickens after you mentioned this.  Someone else had a situation where their chicken or duck into a poisonous plant, they think, and was doing this.  The suggestions were to give activated charcoal but that might be a bit hard, lol.

[Cheryl]

At this point I don't know what to do.  I've picked her up and looked her over and can't find a thing wrong with her.  I've had to spray blu-kote on another hen and she flapped her wings when I put her down and now my right hand is purple.  I've put the pick-no-more stuff on another because my bossiest hen was pulling feathers out of her and made her bleed, so it's been one chicken adventure after another today, but that's par for the course, right?