3ChickensAndAWeenieDog
In the Brooder
- May 12, 2020
- 4
- 0
- 27
Greetings Backyard Chickens Community,
This is my first time posting on here and reaching out directly for help, though I’ve read dozens of threads over the past little over a year of keeping hens in our small suburban backyard and all the minor follies that have accompanied that endeavor. I’m hopeful that fellow members of the community might be able to provide some insight as to a mystery diagnosis case that has been going on with our ISA Brown, Jordan, who is about one year and two months old (please see recent photos below). I will do my best to provide as much detailed information as possible regarding the situation, but please feel free to ask follow-up questions that might better guide your advice/insight and I will do my best to respond helpfully.
All right, so about a month ago, we were highly confident that Miss Jordan was egg-bound. We had conducted a physical examination and discovered an egg lodged between her hip bones. As others have described on previous threads, Jordan was beguilingly asymptomatic—aside from a poopy butt, pale comb and wattle, wider leg gait and penguin-like walk, she was quite chipper, keeping up with our other two girls and never showing outward signs of discomfort or assuming the typical signs of a sick chicken (no droopy tail, no fluffed up feathers and tucked head, no lethargy, etc.). What tipped us off was that she had stopped laying eggs and yet wasn’t molting, wasn’t infested with external parasites that we could see, hadn’t lost weight, and wasn’t otherwise disturbed by any environmental factors. Of course, the lodged egg told all. Unfortunately, this discovery came just as we were about to leave for an extended out-of-town-weekend the following day. That night, we treated Jordan to a chicken spa day in an Epsom salt bath and gave her crushed calcium mixed in water via a dropper and monitored her progress. Alas, no egg resulted. Despite the horror stories that we read about and watched online concerning the mortality of egg-binding, we decided that, being that we don’t know of any avian vets in the area and couldn’t afford to take her to one even if there were, and also given her otherwise normal state and demeanor, that we would give her the weekend to sort it out under the watchful eye of my in-laws who were coming to feed and water them while we were away.
Luckily, Jordan was still alive upon our return and still reassuringly chipper. The following day, I went to the local feed and supply store and bought a syringe and a couple of needles to attempt an egg extraction after my husband returned home from work, given how close the egg had been to her vent when I’d inspected her before we left on our weekend trip. That evening, we put her in another Epsom salt bath and gave her more calcium. Afterward, I had my husband hold her so that I could see where the egg was. To my astonishment, I didn’t feel an egg at all anywhere. Flummoxed, but hopeful, we dried her off and put her back to bed. The next day, my in-laws came over to see photos from our trip, and we asked them if they had gotten an egg from Jordan, to which they confidently replied yes (we have three different breeds of chicken, all of which lay a markedly different colored egg). Over the intervening weeks up until present, we happily watched Jordan’s comb and wattle return to its usual bright red coloration, her continuing to act normal and unencumbered, and she has even been sitting on the nest each morning for at least an hour, even pumping her tail at times as if trying to lay an egg…but to our consternation, no eggs have appeared. And still a poopy butt and runny droppings. And still a wide gait. And on top of everything else, a swollen, but doughy/firm abdomen. No egg-ish lumps or otherwise detectable masses, but definitely firmer than that of our other two girls. Definitely not water belly like—over these weeks it has not increased in size and it is not water balloon-like in its feel when you handle her (i.e. it doesn’t settle in a pool when you hold her up and down). The only thing that I can think of, is that she is either egg-bound farther back in her tract, but then that leads one to wonder why she isn’t sicker (or dead) in that case. The other possibility I’ve found online is egg yolk peritonitis, but we haven’t seen any lash eggs, though I know one issue with diagnosing that is that the hen can seem completely normal, until one day she just capitulates from the internal stress her body is under from dealing with the condition.
Other info on how we care for our chickens: We feed our girls Purina Organic Layer Pellets with Oyster Shell and very few treats (and the treats we do occasionally give them are mainly cast-off greens from our garden), as well as add an electrolyte/probiotic powder to their water. Given that the majority of our small backyard is devoted to vegetable gardening and young landscaping, our girls occupy their coop and run, as well as have free run of the side yard during the day, which consists of bark/wood chips and some rockery areas, as well as our stacked scrap wood, some of which we’ve laid out to make for a more interesting area for the girls to explore. There is also a good sized, sandy dirt area where they often dust bathe. We keep their coop and penned in area tidy and freshened regularly; we use shredded newspaper for bedding.
So, all that said, thoughts on this mystery condition?
This is my first time posting on here and reaching out directly for help, though I’ve read dozens of threads over the past little over a year of keeping hens in our small suburban backyard and all the minor follies that have accompanied that endeavor. I’m hopeful that fellow members of the community might be able to provide some insight as to a mystery diagnosis case that has been going on with our ISA Brown, Jordan, who is about one year and two months old (please see recent photos below). I will do my best to provide as much detailed information as possible regarding the situation, but please feel free to ask follow-up questions that might better guide your advice/insight and I will do my best to respond helpfully.
All right, so about a month ago, we were highly confident that Miss Jordan was egg-bound. We had conducted a physical examination and discovered an egg lodged between her hip bones. As others have described on previous threads, Jordan was beguilingly asymptomatic—aside from a poopy butt, pale comb and wattle, wider leg gait and penguin-like walk, she was quite chipper, keeping up with our other two girls and never showing outward signs of discomfort or assuming the typical signs of a sick chicken (no droopy tail, no fluffed up feathers and tucked head, no lethargy, etc.). What tipped us off was that she had stopped laying eggs and yet wasn’t molting, wasn’t infested with external parasites that we could see, hadn’t lost weight, and wasn’t otherwise disturbed by any environmental factors. Of course, the lodged egg told all. Unfortunately, this discovery came just as we were about to leave for an extended out-of-town-weekend the following day. That night, we treated Jordan to a chicken spa day in an Epsom salt bath and gave her crushed calcium mixed in water via a dropper and monitored her progress. Alas, no egg resulted. Despite the horror stories that we read about and watched online concerning the mortality of egg-binding, we decided that, being that we don’t know of any avian vets in the area and couldn’t afford to take her to one even if there were, and also given her otherwise normal state and demeanor, that we would give her the weekend to sort it out under the watchful eye of my in-laws who were coming to feed and water them while we were away.
Luckily, Jordan was still alive upon our return and still reassuringly chipper. The following day, I went to the local feed and supply store and bought a syringe and a couple of needles to attempt an egg extraction after my husband returned home from work, given how close the egg had been to her vent when I’d inspected her before we left on our weekend trip. That evening, we put her in another Epsom salt bath and gave her more calcium. Afterward, I had my husband hold her so that I could see where the egg was. To my astonishment, I didn’t feel an egg at all anywhere. Flummoxed, but hopeful, we dried her off and put her back to bed. The next day, my in-laws came over to see photos from our trip, and we asked them if they had gotten an egg from Jordan, to which they confidently replied yes (we have three different breeds of chicken, all of which lay a markedly different colored egg). Over the intervening weeks up until present, we happily watched Jordan’s comb and wattle return to its usual bright red coloration, her continuing to act normal and unencumbered, and she has even been sitting on the nest each morning for at least an hour, even pumping her tail at times as if trying to lay an egg…but to our consternation, no eggs have appeared. And still a poopy butt and runny droppings. And still a wide gait. And on top of everything else, a swollen, but doughy/firm abdomen. No egg-ish lumps or otherwise detectable masses, but definitely firmer than that of our other two girls. Definitely not water belly like—over these weeks it has not increased in size and it is not water balloon-like in its feel when you handle her (i.e. it doesn’t settle in a pool when you hold her up and down). The only thing that I can think of, is that she is either egg-bound farther back in her tract, but then that leads one to wonder why she isn’t sicker (or dead) in that case. The other possibility I’ve found online is egg yolk peritonitis, but we haven’t seen any lash eggs, though I know one issue with diagnosing that is that the hen can seem completely normal, until one day she just capitulates from the internal stress her body is under from dealing with the condition.
Other info on how we care for our chickens: We feed our girls Purina Organic Layer Pellets with Oyster Shell and very few treats (and the treats we do occasionally give them are mainly cast-off greens from our garden), as well as add an electrolyte/probiotic powder to their water. Given that the majority of our small backyard is devoted to vegetable gardening and young landscaping, our girls occupy their coop and run, as well as have free run of the side yard during the day, which consists of bark/wood chips and some rockery areas, as well as our stacked scrap wood, some of which we’ve laid out to make for a more interesting area for the girls to explore. There is also a good sized, sandy dirt area where they often dust bathe. We keep their coop and penned in area tidy and freshened regularly; we use shredded newspaper for bedding.
So, all that said, thoughts on this mystery condition?
