batiekutler
In the Brooder
- Apr 19, 2022
- 3
- 6
- 19
Hi all,
About two weeks ago, our hen, Maple, had a pretty nasty prolapse and I reached out to this forum for help. Maple has recovered (so far) from the prolapse and I just wanted to follow up with a guide of what we did and what seemed to work best, in our experience:
4/18/22 we returned from a weekend away to find one of our chickens with cloaca prolapse.
About 35% of the exposed skin had black, dry, surface concerning for ischemia. This was most prevalent posteriorly to the prolapse around the sphincter. The tissue was oozing blood and there was lots of stool covering the rest of it. The skin around the area was red. She seemed upbeat, energetic.
We separated her and put her in large dog crate inside. We started doxycycline at 400 mcg in her water for a seven day course. Used sitz bath, antibiotic cream for hydration on the first day. The black, leathering surfaces of the prolapse remained but some of the stool came off, revealing bleeding tissue underneath. We concluded that the prolapse was the cloaca and we didn’t see any reproductive/GI tissue. The tissue was very swollen. At this point I weren’t sure what our bigger issue was— infection or ischemia. The former would suggest to leave the prolapse outside the body to reduce risk for systemic infection/inflammation but the latter suggested a need for immediate reduction of the tissue back in the body to restore the blood flow and save further tissue. Closer inspection revealed healthy tissue in the margin between the dead skin and the vent spinchter so I bet on the former being the problem.
We added 1% steroid cream and preparation H along with daily soaking in sitz bath. We blow dried her soaks after since temps were high 20s low 30s and we did not want her to get a chill. Because she had been laying soft eggs prior to this (which we thought was the causative issue) we added powdered calcium citrate to her diet of small amounts of fresh produce, which we gave her twice daily. We kept the crate covered most of the day inside and after 72 hr in these conditions she stopped laying eggs entirely.
She had daily improvements in prolapse swelling with the sitz bath, steroids, abx, preparation H. I used the warm water to soften and then manually deride the black tissue.
I attempted reducing the prolapse nightly starting on the third day. At first it came back out right away, then the next day within a few hours. We saw her preening her rear feathers so we used a modified elizabethan cone to help discourage pecking
Day 4
On the 5th day we let her outside to see the others and scratch around for about an hour. She was very excited about this, though did spend a good amount of time just laying in the sun.
Day 5
On the 6th night she had no further scabbing/open sores and her prolapse stayed in over night. Over the next four days without reoccurrence, we re-introduced her to the other chickens for short periods of time. They had pecking battles and ignored her for the first two days but by the fourth day they seemed to have figured it out and she was put back in the run with them, where she seems very happy.
We will retrial laying and see it this causes a reoccurrence. She has maintained her cheery disposition and healthy appetite this entire time.
It has been slow going but we consider this girl our pet and want to encourage others of a good outcome with some attentive care.
About two weeks ago, our hen, Maple, had a pretty nasty prolapse and I reached out to this forum for help. Maple has recovered (so far) from the prolapse and I just wanted to follow up with a guide of what we did and what seemed to work best, in our experience:
4/18/22 we returned from a weekend away to find one of our chickens with cloaca prolapse.
About 35% of the exposed skin had black, dry, surface concerning for ischemia. This was most prevalent posteriorly to the prolapse around the sphincter. The tissue was oozing blood and there was lots of stool covering the rest of it. The skin around the area was red. She seemed upbeat, energetic.
We separated her and put her in large dog crate inside. We started doxycycline at 400 mcg in her water for a seven day course. Used sitz bath, antibiotic cream for hydration on the first day. The black, leathering surfaces of the prolapse remained but some of the stool came off, revealing bleeding tissue underneath. We concluded that the prolapse was the cloaca and we didn’t see any reproductive/GI tissue. The tissue was very swollen. At this point I weren’t sure what our bigger issue was— infection or ischemia. The former would suggest to leave the prolapse outside the body to reduce risk for systemic infection/inflammation but the latter suggested a need for immediate reduction of the tissue back in the body to restore the blood flow and save further tissue. Closer inspection revealed healthy tissue in the margin between the dead skin and the vent spinchter so I bet on the former being the problem.
We added 1% steroid cream and preparation H along with daily soaking in sitz bath. We blow dried her soaks after since temps were high 20s low 30s and we did not want her to get a chill. Because she had been laying soft eggs prior to this (which we thought was the causative issue) we added powdered calcium citrate to her diet of small amounts of fresh produce, which we gave her twice daily. We kept the crate covered most of the day inside and after 72 hr in these conditions she stopped laying eggs entirely.
She had daily improvements in prolapse swelling with the sitz bath, steroids, abx, preparation H. I used the warm water to soften and then manually deride the black tissue.
I attempted reducing the prolapse nightly starting on the third day. At first it came back out right away, then the next day within a few hours. We saw her preening her rear feathers so we used a modified elizabethan cone to help discourage pecking
Day 4
On the 5th day we let her outside to see the others and scratch around for about an hour. She was very excited about this, though did spend a good amount of time just laying in the sun.
Day 5
On the 6th night she had no further scabbing/open sores and her prolapse stayed in over night. Over the next four days without reoccurrence, we re-introduced her to the other chickens for short periods of time. They had pecking battles and ignored her for the first two days but by the fourth day they seemed to have figured it out and she was put back in the run with them, where she seems very happy.
We will retrial laying and see it this causes a reoccurrence. She has maintained her cheery disposition and healthy appetite this entire time.
It has been slow going but we consider this girl our pet and want to encourage others of a good outcome with some attentive care.
