Keeping Chickens Healthy: Common Problems

Here is the good news before we get to the worries: most chicken health problems are prevented, not cured. A clean coop, the right feed and a couple of minutes of watching your hens each day will head off the large majority of issues that backyard keepers in the UK ever face. Healthy hens are genuinely robust, cheerful creatures.

This guide sits alongside the main beginner chicken guide and covers what to look for, the handful of common problems worth knowing about, and a simple routine that keeps trouble away.

How to spot a sick hen

Chickens are prey animals, so they instinctively hide illness — by the time a hen looks obviously poorly, she has usually been unwell for a little while. That is exactly why a daily glance at the flock matters so much. You are not doing a veterinary examination; you are just noticing what is normal so you spot what isn't.

A healthy hen is alert, busy and nosy. She scratches about, comes running for treats, holds her tail up, and has a comb that is a good bright red, plump and waxy. Her eyes are clear and her feathers sit neatly.

The warning signs to learn are:

• Comb and wattles: pale, shrunken, blue-tinged or scabby rather than bright red.
• Posture: standing hunched and fluffed up, often apart from the others, eyes half-closed. A "fluffed and tucked" hen on a warm day is a classic sign something is wrong.
• Appetite and crop: not interested in food or water. Her crop (the pouch at the base of the neck) should feel full in the evening and be empty by morning.
• Droppings: healthy droppings are firm and brown with a white cap; the occasional frothy or caramel-coloured "caecal" dropping is normal. Persistently runny, bloody, green or very watery droppings are worth watching.
• Laying: a sudden drop or stop in laying across the flock, or a single hen who stops, can be an early flag (though laying naturally pauses in winter and during a moult).

If a hen is hunched, off her food and isolated, treat it seriously — separate her somewhere warm and quiet with food and water, keep her comfortable, and read on or call a vet (see below).

Red mite — the big one

If you keep chickens in the UK long enough, you will meet red mite. It is by far the most common problem backyard keepers face, especially through the warm months from late spring to early autumn. The good news is it's manageable once you understand it.

Red mite are tiny parasites that live in the coop, not on the bird. They hide in cracks, crevices, the ends of perches and the joints of the housing during the day, then creep out at night to feed on your hens' blood while they roost. After feeding they turn red — hence the name. In warm weather their lifecycle is alarmingly fast, around a week from egg to adult, so a small problem becomes an infestation quickly.

Signs to look for:

• Hens reluctant to go into the coop at dusk, or roosting in odd places to avoid it.
• Pale combs and a drop in laying (heavy infestations cause anaemia).
• Grey-white ashy deposits and tiny dark specks in the cracks of the coop and at the ends of perches.
• The classic test: wipe a white tissue along the underside of a perch after dark — red or brown smears mean mite.

Treatment is all about the housing. Take everything out and clean the coop thoroughly, then treat every crack and crevice where the mites hide by day. A diatomaceous earth powder (a fine natural mineral dust that dehydrates the mites) puffed into all the joints, perch ends and corners works well, and there are licensed coop sprays too. The key word is repeat — because eggs keep hatching, you need to treat again after about five to seven days, and keep going until the tissue test stays clean.

Prevention is far easier than cure. Clean the coop regularly, dust perch ends with diatomaceous earth as a routine, and check on warm evenings. The single biggest factor, though, is the housing itself: a plastic coop with few seams is dramatically easier to keep mite-free than a wooden one, because there are simply fewer cracks for mites to hide in. This is one of the main reasons we steer beginners towards plastic in the chicken coops and housing guide.

Worms

All chickens that range on the ground will pick up internal worms over time — it is normal, not a sign of poor keeping. A light worm burden does no harm, but a heavy one causes weight loss, a drop in laying, scruffy feathers and runny droppings, and occasionally you'll see worms in the droppings themselves.

The sensible UK approach is routine worming. A licensed poultry wormer (flubendazole-based products are the common choice and are widely available) is given in feed or water, typically every three to six months — spring and autumn are natural points to do it. Always follow the product instructions, as some have an egg-withdrawal period and some don't.

You can reduce the worm load between treatments by moving the run onto fresh ground where possible, keeping the area clean and dry, and not letting it get muddy and overstocked. If you only have a fixed run, regular worming matters more.

Scaly leg, lice and other mites

Scaly leg is caused by a tiny burrowing mite that gets under the scales on a hen's legs and feet. The scales lift, crust and look thickened and rough instead of smooth and flat. It's uncomfortable for the bird but very treatable: the traditional, gentle method is to coat the legs in surgical spirit or a proprietary scaly-leg lotion, or simply to dunk and clean the legs and then smother them in petroleum jelly, which suffocates the mites. Repeat weekly until new, smooth scales grow through. Don't pick at the crusts.

Lice are different from red mite — they live on the bird, not in the coop, and you'll spot them as fast-moving pale insects around the vent and base of the feathers, often with clumps of white eggs glued to the feather shafts. A poultry-licensed louse powder applied to the bird, repeated as directed, clears them. A good dust bath (a tub of dry soil, sand and a little wood ash) is the hens' own natural defence against lice — make sure they always have access to one.

Northern fowl mite is a less common on-bird mite, treated similarly with a licensed powder. As a rule: if the parasites are on the bird, treat the bird; if they hide in the coop, treat the coop.

Broodiness and laying problems

Not every "problem" is an illness. A broody hen has decided she wants to hatch eggs — she'll sit tight in the nest box, fluff up and grumble when you reach under her, and stop laying. It's a natural hormonal state and harmless, but a determined broody won't eat or drink properly, so if you don't want chicks, it's kindest to break the broodiness. Lifting her off the nest several times a day, blocking the nest box, or popping her in a cool, well-ventilated wire-floored crate for a few days usually resets her. You do not need a cockerel for any of this — hens lay perfectly well without one; a cockerel is only needed if you want fertile eggs to hatch.

Soft-shelled or shell-less eggs are common and usually about minerals. Laying hens need a constant supply of calcium to build shells, so always offer crushed oyster shell or mixed poultry grit in a separate dish alongside their feed, and make sure they're on a proper layers ration. Heat, stress and old age can cause the odd soft egg too. A single soft egg is nothing to worry about; a run of them points to calcium or feed. There's more on getting the diet right in the feeding chickens guide.

No eggs at all has innocent explanations more often than not: hens stop or slow right down in winter (they need long daylight hours to lay), pause during their annual autumn moult, and take a break when stressed by a move, a predator scare or extreme weather. New hens often arrive at point of lay — around 16 to 22 weeks old — but can take several weeks more to actually start, especially if they come into autumn or winter. Give them time to settle, keep them fed and calm, and the eggs will come.

When to call a vet

Most of the above you can handle at home. But chickens are still animals that deserve proper care, and some situations need a professional — ideally a vet with poultry experience (your usual practice can often refer you, and avian or farm vets are best).

Call a vet if you see:

• A hen who is hunched, not eating and clearly unwell for more than a day, despite being kept warm and quiet.
• Difficulty breathing, gasping, sneezing, or a rattly chest — respiratory illness can spread through a flock.
• A swollen, firm or squishy abdomen, or a hen straining as if egg-bound (an egg stuck inside her) — this can become an emergency.
• Sudden deaths, or several birds going downhill at once.
• Any injury — a hen attacked by a fox or dog, or a deep wound, needs prompt attention.

It's also worth knowing that notifiable diseases such as avian influenza (bird flu) must by law be reported. If you ever see sudden deaths in several birds with no obvious cause, or signs like swollen heads and severe respiratory distress, contact the APHA helpline and your vet. During official bird-flu housing orders, all keepers must follow the rules in force — these are announced publicly and apply to even a single back-garden hen.

A simple prevention routine

Pull it all together and looking after healthy hens is genuinely light work. A workable rhythm looks like this:

• Daily: food and clean water topped up; the five-second flock check; collect eggs; quick glance at droppings and combs.
• Weekly: remove droppings from the coop and refresh bedding; check perch ends for red mite (more often in warm weather); top up grit and oyster shell; make sure the dust bath is dry and usable.
• Monthly: a more thorough coop clean; have a proper look at each bird, including legs (scaly leg) and vents (lice).
• Seasonally: a deep clean and mite treatment going into and during summer; worm in spring and autumn; expect and accept the winter laying pause and the autumn moult.

None of this is hard, and after a few weeks it becomes second nature. The hens do most of the work of staying well themselves — clean housing, good feed and a watchful eye are nearly the whole of it.

For everything else about getting set up — breeds, housing, daily care and the legal basics — start with the beginner chicken guide, and browse the rest of the keeping chickens section as you go.