Day two of the new regime

This morning as planned I put Sparkle in the cat box again with a dish of mash with the flubinvet and a bowl of water. Again I sprinkled a few sunflower hearts on top to try and get her interested.

She behaved exactly the same as yesterday. She took the sunflowers from the top of the mash but didn’t eat any mash. Two hours later she suddenly started tucking into the mash.

Sparkle is eating the mash, hurrah!

I only took this one photo as I didn’t want to disturb her but it’s so good to see her eating the mash.

I kept her in the cat box until half past two then I gave her a treat of a piece of melon before rejoining her flock mates.

Sparkle has a bit of melon before going back to the run

Once I returned Sparkle to the run she actually jumped from the patio to the log. She made her way to the bottom of the run and had a token scratch then preened a little. She then returned to the table surrounded by her flock mates.

Sparkle is back on the table

Toffee is on the perch on the other side of the wire, Topaz was wandering in the run and Honey was in the nest box. I think Sparkle is slightly improved for having a bit of food and in the cat box were three normal poops so that’s encouraging.

I have a bit of a theory about what may be going on with Sparkle. I am not sure if the worms came first and lowered her resistance causing whatever was making the crackle in her breathing or if that came first but I think once she had the antibiotics and the crackle cleared up she started to feel better.

I know she was feeling better because she took her first dust bath in ages but then the worms knocked her back again. A few days into the flock being wormed she seemed to improve once more but I think because she had both things to deal with in quick succession it took away her appetite.

Sparkle stopped eating the pellets and was only eating treats but at this stage she would eat the corn in the morning and the sunflower hearts at bedtime. As she improved she started laying again but because of her poor diet she couldn’t make egg shells.

Amber always used to look ill when laying a soft shelled egg but she only laid every couple of weeks so had time in between to recover. Sparkle has always laid most days so she laid (I think) four shell less eggs in quick succession which made her feel really poorly. As she became more poorly she stopped laying (thank goodness) and she also stopped eating at bedtime.

I think what she is doing is pretty much what a broody hen does. She has been feeding once a day (in the morning) then sitting all day and conserving her energy. I think this may be her way of taking time to recover. Because she isn’t expending any energy she is surviving on little food and her condition isn’t getting any worse.

I am hopeful that if I continue the current regime for a week it will do two things for her. It will get her wormed again and get her eating pellet mash which will help her recovery. I know from past problems that all these things can take their time to be properly resolved and I hope that if she doesn’t lay again this season she will gradually get back to normal.

I am once again feeling a bit more hopeful that she will come through this.