Megan and Crazy Belle at the Hen Party!
Holistic Hen Health
My lovely friend Megan, treats her beloved hens holistically. She has had great results with her wonderful range of treatments, which ranges from diet to homeopathy, and she shares her experiences with you here. If you cannot find the answer to your queries here, please email us via the Contact Us page, with Ask Megan in the title, and she will be able to answer you directly.
As always, we are not vets, and if you are in any doubt about your girl's condition, please see your vet.
Ascites: Ascites is most usually caused by heart problems in the chicken world, though sometimes leukosis can have the same effect, causing water to gather in the hen’s abdomens. A well known, tried and tested aid for ascites is to bathe your hen in a hot bath of Epsom salts (sold at most chemists). Usually a quarter of a cup of Epsom salts is sufficient in a small bowl, tub, or sink of water.
However, if you have easily spooked girls and you’re worried that the stress of a ten minute bath might cause your hen’s heart condition to worsen, there is a new method that our girl Greta has pioneered! Dandelion tea. Firstly take one bag of organic dandelion tea (we use the Clipper brand) and place it in a cup with 100ml of boiling water. If you can, let this mixture stew overnight to strengthen. Stir well before use and fill a 2.5ml needle-less syringe with the dandelion tea and give to your hen orally two to four times a day with this amount. Usually four times for the first day, and twice every day after that. You may find you need to give her two syringes of this on a permanent basis. Make sure you space the doses out evenly throughout the day. Dandelion tea works as a natural diuretic and causes the body to shed the excess water. A fresh dandelion leaf or root concoction would work just as well, but be very sure to pick clean, non polluted dandelions. It’s safest to pick only from your own allotment or garden if you do not use any chemicals or fertilizers. When using any diuretic, make sure you leave plenty of water and drinks around for your hens so they do not dehydrate.
Anaemia: usually occurs in hens when they have lost blood, either externally (usually from an injury or repeated attack from red mites) or internally (difficulty laying, Fatty Liver Syndrome and other causes). It’s important to remember with anaemia that it is a lack of red blood cells in the body, so not only do you want to feed your birds food rich in iron, but you will also need to support their bone marrow because that is where the red blood cells are made. For this you will need foods rich in vitamin A, B12, iron and folic acid.
Egg yolk is one of the best sources for all of these, or beef if you don’t mind feeding that to your girls. Other good sources of iron come from spinach, cooked lentils, tofu, baked potatoes, pumpkin seeds, apple, ginger, coriander, soy foods in general, fortified breakfast cereals (such as wheat biscuits) and radish leaves/tops.
I’d also recommend that you watch your hen’s calcium intake for the time that they are anaemic, as calcium can interfere with the absorption of iron. Along with that, let your girls move around as usual, but no not allow them to run about or exert themselves excessively as they will already be tired
and lethargic and will not need any further stress put on their bodies.
One last thing to watch if it’s hot weather is dehydration. Anaemic birds generally tend to eat and drink less because they feel unwell, but a lack of fluids will make red blood cell production slow down, so make sure they get plenty of water.
Bleeding or broken blood quills: If your hen has a small wound or a broken blood quill (a very serious occurrence, because when a hen is growing feathers the blood supply leads directly out to each quill shaft) immediately separate your girl from the flock and dust the affected area very thickly with flour. Any kind of flour works, as it clogs to form a thick paste and allows the body to naturally stem the flow.
Breathing problems, infectious bronchitis, coughing and sneezing: Breathing problems are very common amongst ex battery chickens, mostly because of the appalling conditions they are subjected to in the cages. A common condition is Infectious Bronchitis (IB), which though serious if left untreated, need not be a death sentence for your bird.
If your hen is having breathing difficulties, I recommend aconite (the Weleda brand is best as they are ethical and do not test on animals). The dosage should be as following; give one 30c strength tablet to your hen every day. The easiest way to administer it is by crushing it into a teaspoonful of soy milk, filling a syringe with the mixture and give it to your hen orally.
If the bronchitis or breathing condition is recurring, you can give this to your chicken/s indefinitely.
An interesting point with IB is that it tends to get worse at a specific time of month. If you watch for a pattern, you may be able to give the aconite for the week or two when it occurs, and stop on the clear spells.
Also, as there are different types of IB, some of which affect the uterus (or shell gland). I would recommend you read the piece further down the page on thin egg shells and stuck eggs.
As IB generally stays with your hens throughout their life, it can sometimes lower the bird’s immune system and resilience towards other illnesses, so please take a look on how to strength your girls’ immune systems too.
Egg bound/soft eggs:
This happens a surprising amount of times with ex batts, poor Aggie’s had about fifty stuck eggs at least, and she’s laid them all eventually with the help of these methods!
The best treatment of all for an egg bound hen is to get them in some hot water. A warm bath, a soak in a bowl with some warm water in it, even dunk your girl in the sink if you need to! You have to make sure your chicken is immersed up to her hocks, so that her abdomen is submerged and her passageways can be opened up. The longer you can hold her there the better, I’d say minimum time is 10 minutes, but 20 would be ideal. You can do this up to twice a day for as long as necessary. If it’s a sunny, hot day, you can even bath your hen outside. If it is cold, please be sure to dry her off properly with a towel and even pop her in the coop for 30 minutes to let her adjust to the cooler temperatures in there.
Along with bathing, diet is a big help for egg binding. You have to feed your bird foods that contain oxytocin, which causes contractions of the uterus (generally where the egg is stuck!) Apple contains this, along with egg yolk (cooked or raw) and the weed, cleaver, sometimes more commonly known as sticky buds. Apart from this, oxytocin is a ‘love hormone’ so any food that makes your hen really, really happy would most likely help her release oxytocin. Our Aggie adores meat-free soy slices and doesn’t she get through them!
Two sprays, twice a day, of Colloidal Active Silver will keep down any swelling, and if stuck eggs are a regular occurrence, I’d recommend a daily teaspoon of olive oil with a small pinch of ginger, administered orally by syringe. If the egg has been stuck for a while, you can use castor oil which is a little stronger.
If you think your hen’s egg is stuck because of a thin shell, or some muscle weakness in the uterus, give your bird an extra calcium supplement which helps muscle contractions. Please read ‘thin egg shells’ for the correct dosage.
Egg Peritonitis: We had a bird diagnosed with egg peritonitis and she was given until the weekend to live. That was last April, and now Aggie is one of the fittest girls in the flock.
Along with prescribed Baytril, we also administered two sprays of Colloidal Active Silver twice a day. The stronger parts per million the better; we use 10ppm, but I do know 50ppm is available somewhere on the market.
We also keep Aggie on a daily dose of Kali Phos (potassium phosphate). She has one quarter of a 6c (we buy from Weleda again) tablet, again in a suspension of one teaspoon of soy milk syringed orally.
Kali Phos works by relaxing the fimbril - the opening at the top of the oviduct that catches the released yolk that is ready to be laid. Sometimes the area can become too tense and the yolk is missed, allowing it to slip into the abdominal cavity, leading to infection and inflammation (or peritonitis).
Now Aggie is on Kali Phos, she hasn’t had any antibiotics since!
Red Mite: Having just had an experience with red mite myself, the remedies for this are fresh in my mind! Firstly if your hens have been under attack from red mite for a substantial amount of time and they’re looking pale, please also read the anaemia section on this page. For red mite I would say these ideas are good as a preventative, but vigilance is the biggest key with these parasites.
As red mite rarely live on the bird and prefer to stay in the coop, I would recommend using Vaseline (or petroleum jelly) copiously around the ends of the perch, making sure it is a liberal application.
If you’re not sure if you’ve fully eradicated the red mite but have no other coop to temporarily move your hens to, cover your girls’ combs and legs with Vaseline directly before they go to roost. This should deter any midnight biters.
As a constant preventative, add garlic to your hens’ feed every day. A pinch every time you serve up a portion to them should be suffice. If you’re like us, you’ll be dishing up a lot of servings over the day! The garlic simply puts the red mite off your hens, they’ll try and bite your girls and the taste should deter them.
Scaly Leg Mites: There are a lot of solutions available for scaly leg mites, but I would say by far the most effective and economical is Vaseline (petroleum jelly). The Vaseline must be applied liberally all over the legs, front and back, rubbed in upwards against the natural grain of the scales. This should be repeated at least every day for a minimum of two weeks.
If you have one hen with scaly leg mites, it is worth treating the whole flock as they spread easily.
Another alternative is to brush on olive oil or vegetable oil with a paintbrush. If you have a large flock of girls, you can pour the oil into a trough and just dip their legs in, or herd the hens through it en masse.
All these methods work by suffocating the mites that are currently lodged in your birds’ legs!
Thin egg shells: As hens gets older, they can start to lay eggs with very thin shells, or sometimes just a membrane so it looks like the yolk and albumen have been laid completely shell-less! Other causes of thin egg shells can be infectious bronchitis, which can sometimes affect the egg laying gland.
Your hen will need a lot of holistic support if she lays thin egg shells often or all of the time as they are a lot harder to get out of the body than normal eggs.
I would suggest one quarter of a 6c tablet of calcium phosphate or calc phos (by Weleda) crumbled into one teaspoon of soy milk and syringed orally on a daily basis. It takes 4g of calcium to make one egg, so it’s easy to see how one of your girls could become depleted!
Also make sure your hens are getting a good portion of grit, if they try to avoid it, mix the grit/oyster shells in with their feed.
If your hen is struggling, you can give her a one off dose of Zolcal-D. You will need to give her 0.1ml per 100g of body weight. Be very careful with your measurements as it’s not advisable to overdose your girls on calcium. Ex-batts weigh about 2kg as a rough guide, so in that case you would give her 2ml.
If the egg becomes stuck, please read the egg bound section.
My lovely friend Megan, treats her beloved hens holistically. She has had great results with her wonderful range of treatments, which ranges from diet to homeopathy, and she shares her experiences with you here. If you cannot find the answer to your queries here, please email us via the Contact Us page, with Ask Megan in the title, and she will be able to answer you directly.
As always, we are not vets, and if you are in any doubt about your girl's condition, please see your vet.
Ascites: Ascites is most usually caused by heart problems in the chicken world, though sometimes leukosis can have the same effect, causing water to gather in the hen’s abdomens. A well known, tried and tested aid for ascites is to bathe your hen in a hot bath of Epsom salts (sold at most chemists). Usually a quarter of a cup of Epsom salts is sufficient in a small bowl, tub, or sink of water.
However, if you have easily spooked girls and you’re worried that the stress of a ten minute bath might cause your hen’s heart condition to worsen, there is a new method that our girl Greta has pioneered! Dandelion tea. Firstly take one bag of organic dandelion tea (we use the Clipper brand) and place it in a cup with 100ml of boiling water. If you can, let this mixture stew overnight to strengthen. Stir well before use and fill a 2.5ml needle-less syringe with the dandelion tea and give to your hen orally two to four times a day with this amount. Usually four times for the first day, and twice every day after that. You may find you need to give her two syringes of this on a permanent basis. Make sure you space the doses out evenly throughout the day. Dandelion tea works as a natural diuretic and causes the body to shed the excess water. A fresh dandelion leaf or root concoction would work just as well, but be very sure to pick clean, non polluted dandelions. It’s safest to pick only from your own allotment or garden if you do not use any chemicals or fertilizers. When using any diuretic, make sure you leave plenty of water and drinks around for your hens so they do not dehydrate.
Anaemia: usually occurs in hens when they have lost blood, either externally (usually from an injury or repeated attack from red mites) or internally (difficulty laying, Fatty Liver Syndrome and other causes). It’s important to remember with anaemia that it is a lack of red blood cells in the body, so not only do you want to feed your birds food rich in iron, but you will also need to support their bone marrow because that is where the red blood cells are made. For this you will need foods rich in vitamin A, B12, iron and folic acid.
Egg yolk is one of the best sources for all of these, or beef if you don’t mind feeding that to your girls. Other good sources of iron come from spinach, cooked lentils, tofu, baked potatoes, pumpkin seeds, apple, ginger, coriander, soy foods in general, fortified breakfast cereals (such as wheat biscuits) and radish leaves/tops.
I’d also recommend that you watch your hen’s calcium intake for the time that they are anaemic, as calcium can interfere with the absorption of iron. Along with that, let your girls move around as usual, but no not allow them to run about or exert themselves excessively as they will already be tired
and lethargic and will not need any further stress put on their bodies.
One last thing to watch if it’s hot weather is dehydration. Anaemic birds generally tend to eat and drink less because they feel unwell, but a lack of fluids will make red blood cell production slow down, so make sure they get plenty of water.
Bleeding or broken blood quills: If your hen has a small wound or a broken blood quill (a very serious occurrence, because when a hen is growing feathers the blood supply leads directly out to each quill shaft) immediately separate your girl from the flock and dust the affected area very thickly with flour. Any kind of flour works, as it clogs to form a thick paste and allows the body to naturally stem the flow.
Breathing problems, infectious bronchitis, coughing and sneezing: Breathing problems are very common amongst ex battery chickens, mostly because of the appalling conditions they are subjected to in the cages. A common condition is Infectious Bronchitis (IB), which though serious if left untreated, need not be a death sentence for your bird.
If your hen is having breathing difficulties, I recommend aconite (the Weleda brand is best as they are ethical and do not test on animals). The dosage should be as following; give one 30c strength tablet to your hen every day. The easiest way to administer it is by crushing it into a teaspoonful of soy milk, filling a syringe with the mixture and give it to your hen orally.
If the bronchitis or breathing condition is recurring, you can give this to your chicken/s indefinitely.
An interesting point with IB is that it tends to get worse at a specific time of month. If you watch for a pattern, you may be able to give the aconite for the week or two when it occurs, and stop on the clear spells.
Also, as there are different types of IB, some of which affect the uterus (or shell gland). I would recommend you read the piece further down the page on thin egg shells and stuck eggs.
As IB generally stays with your hens throughout their life, it can sometimes lower the bird’s immune system and resilience towards other illnesses, so please take a look on how to strength your girls’ immune systems too.
Egg bound/soft eggs:
This happens a surprising amount of times with ex batts, poor Aggie’s had about fifty stuck eggs at least, and she’s laid them all eventually with the help of these methods!
The best treatment of all for an egg bound hen is to get them in some hot water. A warm bath, a soak in a bowl with some warm water in it, even dunk your girl in the sink if you need to! You have to make sure your chicken is immersed up to her hocks, so that her abdomen is submerged and her passageways can be opened up. The longer you can hold her there the better, I’d say minimum time is 10 minutes, but 20 would be ideal. You can do this up to twice a day for as long as necessary. If it’s a sunny, hot day, you can even bath your hen outside. If it is cold, please be sure to dry her off properly with a towel and even pop her in the coop for 30 minutes to let her adjust to the cooler temperatures in there.
Along with bathing, diet is a big help for egg binding. You have to feed your bird foods that contain oxytocin, which causes contractions of the uterus (generally where the egg is stuck!) Apple contains this, along with egg yolk (cooked or raw) and the weed, cleaver, sometimes more commonly known as sticky buds. Apart from this, oxytocin is a ‘love hormone’ so any food that makes your hen really, really happy would most likely help her release oxytocin. Our Aggie adores meat-free soy slices and doesn’t she get through them!
Two sprays, twice a day, of Colloidal Active Silver will keep down any swelling, and if stuck eggs are a regular occurrence, I’d recommend a daily teaspoon of olive oil with a small pinch of ginger, administered orally by syringe. If the egg has been stuck for a while, you can use castor oil which is a little stronger.
If you think your hen’s egg is stuck because of a thin shell, or some muscle weakness in the uterus, give your bird an extra calcium supplement which helps muscle contractions. Please read ‘thin egg shells’ for the correct dosage.
Egg Peritonitis: We had a bird diagnosed with egg peritonitis and she was given until the weekend to live. That was last April, and now Aggie is one of the fittest girls in the flock.
Along with prescribed Baytril, we also administered two sprays of Colloidal Active Silver twice a day. The stronger parts per million the better; we use 10ppm, but I do know 50ppm is available somewhere on the market.
We also keep Aggie on a daily dose of Kali Phos (potassium phosphate). She has one quarter of a 6c (we buy from Weleda again) tablet, again in a suspension of one teaspoon of soy milk syringed orally.
Kali Phos works by relaxing the fimbril - the opening at the top of the oviduct that catches the released yolk that is ready to be laid. Sometimes the area can become too tense and the yolk is missed, allowing it to slip into the abdominal cavity, leading to infection and inflammation (or peritonitis).
Now Aggie is on Kali Phos, she hasn’t had any antibiotics since!
Red Mite: Having just had an experience with red mite myself, the remedies for this are fresh in my mind! Firstly if your hens have been under attack from red mite for a substantial amount of time and they’re looking pale, please also read the anaemia section on this page. For red mite I would say these ideas are good as a preventative, but vigilance is the biggest key with these parasites.
As red mite rarely live on the bird and prefer to stay in the coop, I would recommend using Vaseline (or petroleum jelly) copiously around the ends of the perch, making sure it is a liberal application.
If you’re not sure if you’ve fully eradicated the red mite but have no other coop to temporarily move your hens to, cover your girls’ combs and legs with Vaseline directly before they go to roost. This should deter any midnight biters.
As a constant preventative, add garlic to your hens’ feed every day. A pinch every time you serve up a portion to them should be suffice. If you’re like us, you’ll be dishing up a lot of servings over the day! The garlic simply puts the red mite off your hens, they’ll try and bite your girls and the taste should deter them.
Scaly Leg Mites: There are a lot of solutions available for scaly leg mites, but I would say by far the most effective and economical is Vaseline (petroleum jelly). The Vaseline must be applied liberally all over the legs, front and back, rubbed in upwards against the natural grain of the scales. This should be repeated at least every day for a minimum of two weeks.
If you have one hen with scaly leg mites, it is worth treating the whole flock as they spread easily.
Another alternative is to brush on olive oil or vegetable oil with a paintbrush. If you have a large flock of girls, you can pour the oil into a trough and just dip their legs in, or herd the hens through it en masse.
All these methods work by suffocating the mites that are currently lodged in your birds’ legs!
Thin egg shells: As hens gets older, they can start to lay eggs with very thin shells, or sometimes just a membrane so it looks like the yolk and albumen have been laid completely shell-less! Other causes of thin egg shells can be infectious bronchitis, which can sometimes affect the egg laying gland.
Your hen will need a lot of holistic support if she lays thin egg shells often or all of the time as they are a lot harder to get out of the body than normal eggs.
I would suggest one quarter of a 6c tablet of calcium phosphate or calc phos (by Weleda) crumbled into one teaspoon of soy milk and syringed orally on a daily basis. It takes 4g of calcium to make one egg, so it’s easy to see how one of your girls could become depleted!
Also make sure your hens are getting a good portion of grit, if they try to avoid it, mix the grit/oyster shells in with their feed.
If your hen is struggling, you can give her a one off dose of Zolcal-D. You will need to give her 0.1ml per 100g of body weight. Be very careful with your measurements as it’s not advisable to overdose your girls on calcium. Ex-batts weigh about 2kg as a rough guide, so in that case you would give her 2ml.
If the egg becomes stuck, please read the egg bound section.
