Sick chicken? Please help

A few days ago, one of my hens started brooding. This didn't surprise me, because I read heat could induce this behavior.

She was bullying the other hens out of the nesting box, so I decided to move her. Because it was so hot, I did not want to isolate her in the brooder that was outside (I recently had another chicken die when it was isolated because it ran out of water). I moved her to an old dog kennel I had in my basement.

She has been in the kennel for the past 3 days, has hardly moved, and it is hard to tell if she has been eating or drinking. She also does the typical brooding chicken "screams" whenever I put my hand near her.

Tonight, I was going to move her back out to the coop to reassimilate her with the flock. But when I picked her up, I noticed a foul odor, and then a runny brownish-yellow discharge coming from her rear.

I put her back in the kennel, and, after frantic google research, went to go check on her again. This time she vomited up a thin watery liquid.

After losing two hens in the last 7 months, I really don't want to lose another. Any insight or advice is greatly appreciated.
Thank you.

Hi Allen. Welcome to permies!
If she “vomited up a thin watery liquid”, then for sure she has ‘sour crop’. Sour crop is a yeast (Candida) infection of the crop. It can be treated easily.

About the “runny brownish-yellow discharge”, this one is called ‘vent gleet’ and can be caused by many things- bacterial infection, yeast infection of the cloaca, or (rarely) parasites. A fecal test would pinpoint the cause of the discharge. But you said something very relevant, you “noticed a foul odor”. How far away was she when you noticed the smell? Because the difference between a discharge caused by bacterial infection and a discharge caused by an yeast infection is: the yeast infection really makes the bird stink. In a closed room, the smell is noticeable when you enter the room. In the open air, you know when you pick her up.

Conclusion: very likely she has a systemic yeast (Candida) infection, um, at both ends. How old is she? I had my first sour crop in a young hen who overindulged in mashed potatoes. The second was in an old hen, nothing specific about what she had eaten. My only Candida vent gleet was in a middle aged hen who had been suffering from salpingitis for a few days.

Treatment: can be treated at home with over the counter antifungal cream, like something containing MICONAZOLE. I’d recommend you duckduckgo or google ‘sour crop’ a little bit, to familiarize yourself with it, finding out the potential causes, etc. For the ‘vent gleet’, she needs a good local bath and an application of miconazole cream around the vent and a little inside the vent, daily, for 2 or 3 days. For the sour crop, a question, is she still eating? She must be fed only things that don’t encourage the yeast, like plain active yogurt (no sugar!), maybe some cucumber, things like that, very little feed or no feed at all. And then wait a little and see if she gets better. But if her crop is very swollen and puffy, and she stopped eating, then we should give her some miconazole cream in her beak too.
Is she still eating?    

The smell is not so strong that I can notice it from across the room. I think her crop feels normal, but I don't have much experience checking chickens' crops. I don't think she has been eating. If she has, it's not very much.

She did another poo this morning, much more solid this time, but still extremely foul-smelling. I will attach a picture

I moved her outside to a shaded area, and now she seems quite lively. She is pecking and scratching the ground, as well as eating and drinking a little bit.

It’s very good that she is lively! A yeast infection in the beginning is, after all, just a (major) annoyance. Yet if these hens are neglected, they can die from it. You didn’t mention her age.    

The ‘over the internet’ diagnosis of sour crop is correct, because this is what makes the liquid accumulate in the crop. To fight the yeast naturally, she needs probiotic help- plain active yogurt (no sugar!) like I mentioned. Boiled egg for protein. I forgot raw apple cider vinegar. In order for it to have live cultures, it has to be raw, or unpasteurized (another term), dosage 1 tablespoon to a gallon of water.  
https://poultrydvm.com/condition/candidiasis

In a most worrisome way (for myself), I also forgot to mention my third case of sour crop, in an old rooster. I was already treating him for something else, so for his sour crop I tried fresh pomegranate juice and it worked. I simply bought a pomegranate and made a little fresh juice at a time and wet his feed with it.

If you take her to the vet, he’ll prescribe Nystatin. https://poultrydvm.com/cases/spike

But you can treat her at home with miconazole, the thing you don’t need a prescription for. This is an excellent article explaining how: https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/how-to-treat-sour-crop-and-impacted-crop-and-how-to-know-which-one-youre-dealing-with.73607/

Please look at the links. I don't know what's going on with the poultrydvm links, the addresses are correct.  Hope this helps!

She seems to be completely normal now. Her poos are looking normal and there has been no more liquid
coming from her beak.

I felt her crop this morning, and it felt normal (I think);
it was soft, but no softer than my other chickens.

How much longer should I monitor her before I can give her a clean bill (beak) of health?

Well, a spontaneous healing is rare, so you really have to make sure you’re not falling prey to wishful thinking. How is her vent area? About monitoring her, it’s continuously/forever, there’s no getting out of it I’m afraid. They can’t speak and being in captivity they depend on the keeper completely. We have to watch them closely, everyday, and notice everything.

I have a strong recommendation to make, for everyone who has chickens or quails etc, but first, why. Because unfortunately the internet is full of useless chatter and also purely bad information- for example unrefined coconut oil is supposed to fight the yeast, but in reality it’s actually too weak and does nothing (tried it). Also because sour crop is so common and everyone runs into it sooner or later. It’s a good idea then to copy and paste the content of this article

https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/how-to-treat-sour-crop-and-impacted-crop-and-how-to-know-which-one-youre-dealing-with.73607/

and have it handy in your files, because everything including the treatment method is explained very clearly, and such useful accurate info is not easy to find, it’s like searching for a needle in a haystack. Good luck!

Allen Carlson wrote:She seems to be completely normal now. Her poos are looking normal and there has been no more liquid
coming from her beak.  ...
How much longer should I monitor her before I can give her a clean bill (beak) of health?

Howdy!
Welcome to Permies!
Give her a couple of days - if you've kept her inside this long, and are monitoring her feed and water, and she's back to normal for her (or close enough), you can probably start letting her back outside. I'd make sure she can rest inside where you can keep an eye on her for a couple of days, but she can go back to chilling with her peeps in the flock by the end of the week, all other things being fine.

Really? I wouldn't keep her isolated for much longer than you have or you start running into flock issues. As long as she's not getting picked on, she'll be fine.

It's a good idea to look at what your flock is eating and drinking and make sure you're giving them options. While it's not popular in some chicken-keeping circles, feeding chickens eggs, milk products, milk, and certain other things is good for them, overall. The advice to give a sick chicken cooked egg (I prefer scrambled, but hard-boiled and minced for chicks), live yogurt and Apple Cider Vinegar (only in plastic or ceramic containers! Metal ones react with the vinegar!) is great for naturopathic chicken keeping.

Good luck with your hen and happy chicken-keeping!

Thank you all so much for your help. She is now back with the flock and happy. I think the irregular poo was just from her not eating or drinking enough, and she just sput up the water that was In her crop.