Unknown vent area related internal injury (pictures are unpleasant/graphic)

[Wyorp Rock]

I'm glad some of the crusty material has started to come off and the tissue underneath seems to be healthy.
Keep up with what you are doing!
It's good that you have a vet appt and will have her checked out.
Let us know how the visit goes.

 

[MooseLovesTwigs]

Alright, we're going to leave for the vet in a little bit here. I'll let you guys know what happens later on, fingers crossed that they can help her.

 

[MooseLovesTwigs]

Alright, things went pretty well (we think). The vet couldn't tell what the mass actually was or if it was essential in keeping her alive but since it was mostly dead we decided to amputate the entire mass and hope for the best. She got anesthesia and it took about 15 minutes and there was minimal complications so far. Things could still take a turn for the worse but the most risky part of it is probably over. At the very least, by tomorrow morning if she's still ok then I'd say the risk will be much lower that it was needed for her to keep living. Their best guess was that it might've been a papilloma or something like it. They said to keep her on the antibiotics for at least a week and to split the dose in half and give it to her 2x a day. They said they recommend stopping salt water baths, at least for now, and only doing a little hydrocortisone or mineral oil on the outside of her vent. She looks rather fine now and is no longer drowsy from the anesthesia. The biggest risk to come is that she lays another egg before it heals and has the stitches removed so I'm going to reduce her light a little more so she hopefully doesn't. I also talked with them about getting her a suprelorin implant so that she stops laying for 3-6 months but they didn't have it on hand so we'll have to order it if we want to go that route. This whole visit was under $100, so that's great too, since I was only worried about the cost when I thought it was many hundreds or more for things like this. Thanks everyone for all the good advice, I'll keep you guys posted on her hopeful recovery but I'm feeling pretty optimistic that things could go back to normal or close.

 

[MooseLovesTwigs]

Here she is now and we're keeping her separate from her sister for at least a couple days.

 

[azygous]

You're very lucky to live in Colorado where vets don't believe that chickens are huge money-makers. Even at that, $100 for everything the vet did was a bargain! If you were in California, it could have been tens times that.

She looks pretty darned perky for having gone through surgery. She's lucky to have a human that cares so much about her well being.

 

[Wyorp Rock]

She's looking good!

I hope she recovers quickly.
I'm glad the vet was able to help! I agree, the cost was very reasonable. You wouldn't even get in the door of a vet for less than $125-150 here and that's just getting in.

 

[Wyorp Rock]

How is she doing?

 

[MooseLovesTwigs]

How is she doing?

Still seems to be doing just fine! I think that she even looks better than yesterday. She's no longer huddled down with her feathers puffed out and, although I think that the stitches around her vent are bothering her a little, she doesn't look like she's in any real pain from the surgery. There could still be complications but the majority of the risk that we amputated something important to her life is diminishing rapidly I think.

 

[Lylah Stein]

Type of bird: Serama chicken (with silkied feathers), very small around 12oz weight, 1+ year old.

Behavior: Picking with beak at vent area and beak has occasionally been bloody. Otherwise she's been pretty normal until today she seemed just a tiny bit more lethargic than average but still eating/drinking normally.

The actual description of the emergency/injury/whatever it is: When I inspected her vent up close I saw what I thought was a clump of poop stuck to her feathers but after soaking her in a Epsom salt water bath I noticed a significant amount of blood coming from her vent area. On closer inspection there was a dark, black colored mass that is partly a blood clot, some of her poop, and possibly some of her actual internal tissue (as in flesh). The first time this happened it was a rather small mass and after soaking her in a bath and cleaning the area I dried her off and put her back in her coop. I checked on it daily and after 3 or so days the mass had receded into her body or gone away somehow so I thought it was gone and must've been a prolapse (this was a guess). She seemed to be fine for about 2 months (until now). Also, I limited her light to less than 10 hours a day because I thought it might be a prolapse and wanted to give her reproductive system some time to heal. Anyways, fast forward to today when I decided to give her another bath since I thought she had some poop built up near her vent and was picking at the area again (this has happened without any bloody masses before so I assumed nothing was wrong besides that). When I looked, though, there was a larger amount of poop than I was expecting and after putting her in the water and gently trying to clean the area I noticed a significant amount of blood coming from the area. That is when I felt the actual mass attached to her vent area and realized that it was like the first time but this time it was larger (worse). Like the first time, it seemed to be a part of her body, not just poop. I called someone to help me clean the area and inspect her and was then able to do my best to remove any poop that wasn't part of the mass of flesh and soaked her for a little bit. The bleeding had only happened when I first put her in the water and luckily had stopped long before I dried her off.

Timeframe: This has happened before about 2 months ago and visibly went back to normal (on the outside at least) after treatment with Epsom salt baths. Now it's happening again and I'm treating it in the same way as before but feel like I'm just guessing as to what the issue is.

Other birds are not exhibiting similar symptoms (thankfully).

She has been eating/drinking normally (if not voraciously) throughout her whole life, now included.

Poop looks normal other than that it has sometimes stuck to her feathers around her vent.

Treatments so far: I've done Epsom salt soaks to clean the area. I've reduced amount of time she get's sunlight to less than 10 hours/day until a few weeks ago when I went back to normal daylight cycles. I've used a very small amount of an herbal powder directly on the bleeding part to help stop bleeding/pain/prevent further infection (it's made of mainly Osha Root (ligusticum porterii)) which is something I've used on myself and my animals for my whole life (although never for something quite like this). I've also been giving them a very small amount of oil of oregano in their water for general wellness but this is not specific to this injury or whatever it is.

Intent of treatment: I would love nothing more than for her to get better but I live many hours from any poultry vets and have little money (if any) to pay for their help even if there was one closer than that. For that reason I intend to see if anyone else knows more about what I'm facing here so that I can decide what there is to be done or if she is beyond anything I can do. I still don't really know what this even is, I've thought it could be a prolapse or other reproductive system related issue but I've also worried that it could be a tumor/disease or something more like that.

Where she lives: Since she can't survive the Colorado winters outside with our other chickens and since she is more of a pet than an egg producer she (and her sister) lives indoors in a large watering trough converted into a coop with hemp bedding that is right next to some large windows. She also gets outside into a hawk-proof chicken run/coop (a lightly used Eglu we found on craigslist) most days that are over 40 degrees F and that is where we plan to keep them during the summer.


Anyways, if anyone has any idea what this is or how you'd go about treating it then I would be very grateful to know about it. I'm worried that there won't be anything I can do to help her but will be glad just to know what may have happened. I'm not sure how I can sensor the pictures from unwary eyes or I would but beware they are very graphic and if there is a way to do this please let me know so I can. The pictures aren't very bright/clear but they were the best I could take with the sun going down fast and my helper needed to leave as well as the chicken was getting sick of being held/wet. I will try to reply as soon as I can to anyone here but I'm likely headed to bed soon and it may be later tomorrow before I can check up on this due to it still being during the week.

Thanks for taking the time to help,

- L

Definitely looks like a vent prolapse, and she either injured the vent by pecking or had an egg stuck that did damage when it finally came out. I just went through this too, and I also live in an area without access to a vet that will treat chickens, and have had to figure this one out on my own. Warm Epsom salt soak for 20+ minutes or until clean, wash again with clean warm water to rinse her off after the soak. Then using clean hands or gloves, you will need to push the vent back inside the body, and hold it there until she relaxes enough for it to stay. I would keep her separate, continue to limit light to prevent laying more eggs, and I would put her on something clean and easy to change out like puppy pads or paper towels, then you can see what's still happening back there easily on the pads. Preventing infection is key here, DO NOT use anything oil based on the vent, if it really won't go back in with just wet hands use something water based like ky jelly that can be easily rinsed off the area. Also trim any feathers that are touching the vent. And definitely keep her away from any other birds that could peck at the area. If she's still pecking at it you'll need to deter that somehow or it will stay an open wound. Also, just so you know, it's SIGNIFICANTLY more likely to happen again now that she has had a prolapse happen. So just keep an eye on her, she could be fine after this for the next year and then have it happen, or this could turn into a constant issue if it doesn't heal right. I'm currently looking into whether or not I should be giving some kind of antibiotics to prevent infection in my silkie, since this time the damage from the egg being stuck was pretty bad.

 

[-Shade-]

Keep a close eye on her even after she heals. I had a hen with a prolapse once before, and she died from egg block complications a few months later.