Prolapsed Vent - Causes and Treatment

[hannah and the chickens]

Hello everyone!

On Sunday I found one of my one year old Bielefelder hens with a prolapsed vent. I'm a relatively new chicken keeper as they are my first chickens (bought them around March last year), so I did not want to treat this on my own without professional help. Therefore, I made some calls to find a vet who knew how to treat chickens and was open on a sunday. Luckily, I found a clinic (even though it's a fourty minute drive) where they were able to help my chicken.
The most common treatment I've read about on here is to try to put the vent back and hope it stays in. Because the prolapse was rather big, the vet said that that wouldn't work and gave me the options of putting her down or trying surgery with the risk of my hen dying because of the anaesthesia. The surgery was expensive and I wouldn't have been able to pay for it myself but my mum stepped in and offered to pay the bills for the treatment so we decided to risk the surgery. My chicken made it, I was able to take her home around two hours later and she even ate and drank something the same evening!

Today I took her to the clinic again to get her checked out once more since the x-ray they took on Sunday showed that there was still one egg inside of her. The vet said that luckily, the egg is still not at the front and therefore decided that even though it will be uncomfortable for her, it is better to not disrupt the stitches and not get the egg out today but instead gave me another appointment for Thursday morning.
So right now, I have her back at home, isolated in a dog crate inside the chicken coop. She gets antibiotics once a day and got an anti-inflammatory from the vet today, too. I can tell she is not at her highest (obviously) but she also seems active enough and eats and drinks on her own. We'll have to wait til Thursday and hope that everything healed enough until then that getting the egg out won't cause her vent to prolapse again.

The questions I have right now are as follows: Does anyone on here have experience with a prolapsed vent and surgery recovery like this? Did your chicken make a full recovery? And also, what can cause a prolapsed vent? Many sources I read said that oftentimes a misshapen or too big egg will cause the vent to prolapse, but my chicken only ever had normal eggs and the egg visible in the x-ray is normal in size and position as well. Are there infections (parsites, bacteria...) that might cause a prolapsed vent? The vet thinks that an infection is the most likely cause and since he is a well known expert with birds I trust that that might be true but it still makes me wonder since in all the time reading about chicken health, I've never come across a parasite or an infection causing a prolapsed vent.

I feel really helpless right now, I wish I knew the cause for this. Also, seeing my chicken this sick just makes me doubt myself- I do everything as best as I know and I deeply care for my chickens but apparently I still missed something important for it to get this bad for her. I just hope she doesn't get worse until Thursday and that the vet is able to figure out what was the cause.
I'd be grateful for any ideas about causes (apart from egg size and shape since that can be ruled out) or for stories about your experiences in treating chickens with a prolapsed vent!

 

[Peaches Lee]

I'm so impressed you have a Vet that actually did work on a chicken! How blessed you are truly! I think following his advice and medicine is your best bet.

I've had one prolapsed vent on a Silkie that I was able to push back inside, apply Preparation H and kept her isolated. She did great. I was lucky (cuz she were cute!)

I do have a theory, and it may be wrong, but I also have thought that perhaps prolapse is caused by a disturbance during egg laying...just an idea though.

You sound like an excellent chicken keeper (and your mom, how nice of her to help out financially!)

Luck to you and yours!

 

[hannah and the chickens]

Peaches Lee thanks for your nice reply! I'm truly grateful that we found this vet, too! And also that my mum said she'd cover the costs, she has been supporting me through this whole thing.

Today I had to discover that my second Bielefelder hen apparently also had her vent prolapse, so I took her to the vet immediately. Luckily, it wasn't as bad as with the first hen, the vet thought that I probably found her within a few hours after her vent prolapsed (meaning he estimates that the vent prolapsed sometime in the night, without her having laid an egg at all!) and he didn't have to perform surgery. Instead, he somehow stapled everything so the vent would stay in place.
This to me supports the theory the vet had from the beginning that egg laying is not the cause for my chickens' problem. I brought a poop sample so that he can check for parasites, coccidia and maybe also bacteria. Since I'll have to bring both hens in for a checkup on Thursday anyways, he'll share the results of those tests then.

Apart from the fact that they both had their vent prolapse, both hens are doing alright. The first one is visibly uncomfortable since she's practically egg-boung (as I explained in the first post, they couldn't take the egg out during surgery and now it can't get out because of the stitches so she'll have to hang on until the stitches are pulled on Thursday) but eating and drinking well. She even roams the garden a bit whenever I can supervise her. The other hen is basically behaving as normal. She actually broke free of the makeshift enclosure I isolated her in (I wasn't prepared for two of my four chickens to fall ill at once) and the other chickens don't peck her so I decided it is fine for her to run with them. I still keep a close I on all of them of course!

I would be glad if anyone else could tell me about their experiences with prolapsed vents, surgery aftercare and so on.

 

[SHP]

Peaches Lee thanks for your nice reply! I'm truly grateful that we found this vet, too! And also that my mum said she'd cover the costs, she has been supporting me through this whole thing.

Today I had to discover that my second Bielefelder hen apparently also had her vent prolapse, so I took her to the vet immediately. Luckily, it wasn't as bad as with the first hen, the vet thought that I probably found her within a few hours after her vent prolapsed (meaning he estimates that the vent prolapsed sometime in the night, without her having laid an egg at all!) and he didn't have to perform surgery. Instead, he somehow stapled everything so the vent would stay in place.
This to me supports the theory the vet had from the beginning that egg laying is not the cause for my chickens' problem. I brought a poop sample so that he can check for parasites, coccidia and maybe also bacteria. Since I'll have to bring both hens in for a checkup on Thursday anyways, he'll share the results of those tests then.

Apart from the fact that they both had their vent prolapse, both hens are doing alright. The first one is visibly uncomfortable since she's practically egg-boung (as I explained in the first post, they couldn't take the egg out during surgery and now it can't get out because of the stitches so she'll have to hang on until the stitches are pulled on Thursday) but eating and drinking well. She even roams the garden a bit whenever I can supervise her. The other hen is basically behaving as normal. She actually broke free of the makeshift enclosure I isolated her in (I wasn't prepared for two of my four chickens to fall ill at once) and the other chickens don't peck her so I decided it is fine for her to run with them. I still keep a close I on all of them of course!

I would be glad if anyone else could tell me about their experiences with prolapsed vents, surgery aftercare and so on.

So, where are things at now? How have your hens faired?