- Dec 8, 2014
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I have a chicken that had an issue with her vent and so I brought her inside and gave her fewer hours of light and took her off layer feed while she recovered. She is 6 months old, Columbian Wyandotte, and on a day when we had a high of -1 I found her in my open barn with a sheet of something covering her entire bottom. My chickens are free range and don't mind going outside in the cold. However they are all 6 months old so this is their first winter and as it progresses they seem to be choosing to spend more time during the day in their coop, though they all go outside for at least a little while. I bathed her and most of it melted, but there was a plug of some sort stuck to her cloaca (which was slightly protruding from her vent) that I could not get off without I think causing serious damage to her cloaca. It was like concrete and I could not remove it despite multiple baths and soaks over multiple days. The first day she tried to lay and I was there and the egg was not going to come out unless I ripped the plug and possibly cloaca, so I tapped the small end of the egg and cracked it, then pulled it out (I know that is dangerous to do but I couldn't figure out how else to get it out of her). I got the whole egg and contents out. Since then I've been able to keep her from laying. I used many ideas from this site and the Chicken Chick website in treating her, and today the Vet said she looks great (in fact he said without me telling him he would never have known she was sick), and the mini prolapse has been gone for 5 days now. However, I was never able to fully remove the plug; it just went inside her with the cloaca. My hope is that it disintegrated while inside her, but I can't be sure until she lays again. I'm starting her back on layer feed and turning the lights on all day now so that she can lay again. My question is, how soon will she start to lay most likely after my doing this? I want to keep her in the house until I see her lay once so that I know she won't relapse before I put her back with the other chickens as they would probably worsen her problem (I have 24 others). She was really at deaths door when I found her the first time so I want to be sure I give her enough time to fully recover before I send her back out. Thanks!