Condition scoring your hens

Provided by New Zealand Lifestyle Block, incorporating Growing Today, magazine.

It's much easier to tell if an animal like a cow or a horse is too fat or too thin, but with poultry you need to get hands-on.

Knowing what condition your birds are in under all those feathers can help you decide if they are getting enough to eat, or enough to eat and lay eggs, or getting enough to eat and grow a new set of feathers.

Additional activities like laying or going through a moult require extra feed over and above maintenance levels. Just like a dairy cow which is milking and probably also carrying her next calf, or a sheep which is feeding a lamb as well as trying to keep warm by growing more wool, a hen will have an ideal 'condition' which you can assess with a bit of practice.

Hold the bird up by the legs with one hand (if you keep it upside down it will be more co-operative) with its back against your chest. With the palm of your hand, feel the front of the bird for the keel bone which runs the length of its body. The development of the breast muscles along either side of the keel bone will indicate whether they are plump, convex or concave which will indicate what kind of condition the bird is in.

There is a good relationship between a birds' fat and muscle reserves and the condition of the breast muscles. There are some breed differences between the muscle development, ie between a specially-bred meat chicken as you would see in the supermarket where the keel bone is almost an elongated furrow between bulging muscle, and that of a small bantam or one of the egg-producing breeds like a Leghorn. However, with practice and frequent handling you will become accustomed to what your birds should be normally.

The following cross sections of a bird at the keel bone can indicate the different conditions which can then be scored 0 to 3 on the following scale.

Weight and weight gain or loss are also good indicators of a bird's state of health. Weighing your birds from time to time will help you decide whether your birds are developing normally or not.

For people who have commercial layers like Hyline Browns and Shaver Browns, there are weight guides for these breeds online so you can compare your birds with the breed standard. For owners of purebred heritage breeds there are also breed standards which should indicate what the typical adult weight for a breed should be.

Assessing fatness

The abdominal area of the bird from the tip of the breast bone/keel to the vent can also indicate whether a bird is too fat or too thin. This area is where birds tend to lay down most of their fat which covers the area between the intestines and the skin. If you take this area of skin between your fingers and thumb, the distance between your fingers will indicate the thickness of the fat.

A normal healthy hen will have about 4-8cm of fat in this area (combining both sides) or a thickness of 2-4 cm under the skin. A grossly fat hen will have considerably more, while on a skinny hen (and most roosters) you will be able to feel your fingers between the layer of skin held between them.

If a hen has egg peritonitis, where the yolk material has slipped into her body cavity and set up an infection and associated fluid, her abdomen will feel hot, tense and hard as well as distended.

What else can you tell from handling your hens?

The crop is part of the digestive system. It is a pouch in the oesophagus (gullet) which is a food store so a bird can peck and swallow a lot of food very quickly to fill its crop and then trickle feed it down into its true stomach at leisure, while it goes off to lay an egg or dust bathe or sit somewhere safe from predators.

The crop is situated halfway down the neck, between the beak and the front of the keel bone and slightly to the right. When empty you would never notice it was there if you held a bird and felt down its front.

But after a bird has eaten it will feel about the size of an apple in a medium-sized bird, and bigger or smaller depending on how big the bird is. If the bird has drunk a lot of water, it will feel like a small balloon, and if it has a crop full of pellets or wheat you will be able to feel the lumpiness of the particles.

A newly-hatched chick should have a crop about the size of a marble sticking out from its front within 24 hours of being offered food and water, indicating that it has found where to locate them.

The only digestion which takes place in the crop is the addition of saliva which helps to maintain a porridge-like consistency, and includes some enzymes which begin carbohydrate breakdown.

The size of the crop will fluctuate throughout the day. When a bird goes to roost it will look reasonably full, but by the morning it will have shrunk back to nothing.

Keeping an eye on the crop can highlight whether a bird is healthy or suffering from crop-related problems.

Two conditions which can affect the normal function of the crop are sour crop and an impacted crop (crop bound) which have similar looks but different causes.

Sour crop will be evident from a large, squishy-feeling crop which does not empty overnight. It may be very swollen and pendulous and feel watery to the touch. The contents will begin to ferment due to the fungal infection that causes sour crop, so the bird's breath will be unpleasant.

This can arise due a blockage which prevents the downward movement of feed like a twisted lump of grass.

Treatment

You may be able to empty the crop by holding the bird upside down and gently massaging the contents out through the beak. Once emptied you need to kill the fungal infection. You can acidify the bird's water by adding apple cider vinegar to it (5ml per litre). You may have to repeat the treatment over 3 or 4 days, then discontinue the vinegar and mix some natural yoghurt, full of beneficial bacteria, with the bird's feed.

Impacted Crop or Crop Bound

Again, the crop does not empty overnight, but in this case it will feed very hard and enlarged. In both sour crop and crop bind the bird will appear lethargic, lose weight and be disinclined to eat. It is often caused by birds eating long fibrous lengths of grass which get tangled into a ball blocking the outlet to the gullet.Newly-mown grass can also form a wad which will not move.

Treatment

Drop 2-3ml of vegetable oil or liquid paraffin into the bird's mouth and then massage the crop area morning and night - this may help break up the mass and get it moving. Feed soft mushy food, perhaps including some natural yoghurt, and note it may take a couple of days to move along.

This article was provided by NZ Lifestyle Block, incorporating Growing Today magazine.
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