Possible Egg Peritonitis - Can it be fixed if caught early?

We currently have 4 Isa Brown hens and previously lost one to Egg Peritonitis who was put to sleep by the vet.

Recently when cuddling one of our girls I noticed she has overall become fatter in the last month or two, but she was never a big bird so it has been a little strange to me. While she has put on weight overall, comparing her bottom to the others, hers is more squishy/less firm. She regularly goes to the nest to do an egg, but there is nothing there.

None of our girls are laying anymore, though 2 "pretend", but this girl I'm worried about because of her increased size and she was always a petite bird compared to the others.

I'm contemplating taking her to the vet for a check up even if he says she has it and there is nothing we can do. She's the favourite hen so if we can do anything for her we will.

Has anyone had a chicken recover from egg peritonitis? Almost everything I've read says there is no cure.

The only true cure would be to spay the chicken...but most vets don't do that. Sometimes strong antibiotics can control it for awhile. Sometimes the balloon feeling is infection that can be drained...it may or maynot return depending on the cause an antibiotics used......

I've been meaning to come back and update this.

After a trip to the vet he confirmed she was in early stages of egg peritonitis.

Rather than spaying, our option was to have a birth control hormone implant inserted under the skin to stop her ovulation. it is something they used to do for cats before spaying, but it apparently works just as well in hens. They had to order in the implant for her so they gave her a dose of antibiotics which would last 7 days and asked us to decide if we wanted to go ahead with the implant.

To give her every chance we got the implant done earlier this week. It was about $160 but we also got some worming treatment for all 4 of our girls at the same time.



Today we had a little emergency and rushed her back to the vets. She had attempted to lay what appeared to be a small deformed egg, but it was still attached to her and we could see a little of the inner tract stuck to it holding it to her body. The vet carefully removed the egg-thing from her and the part it was stuck to went back up inside.

Then the vet cut the strange thing into sections and found it was like a yolk that had become attached to the wall of her "uterus" or whatever chickens have, and then the body had started walling it off with layer after layer of a skin like hard surface. It didn't have a shell or white, and also the yolk was solid, like a boiled egg. Who knows how long that was inside her until she passed it for it to get so big!! The vet said he hadn't seen anything like it in 30 years. I wish I'd thought to take a picture of it with my phone, but it was a bit yuck.

We've got her under observation now with the danger being if the skin inside gets infected. Hopefully the course of antibiotics she got today will prevent that. Fingers crossed for her!!

Wow thats great to know about the implant. Our three isa brown hens have all had egg perionitis. The first died, the second had an operation - where she was spayed to remove all the hard boiled eggs and pus cost us $900 AUD, then our third had the same, had the op for $900 and died yesterday, she never woke up from the anasethetic.

Its good to know that you can prevent it if caught early.