Eggbound??

hi everyone. this is my first time posting a question so bear with me!
i have four hens about one year old. it the last week or so i have noticed that one of my barred rocks has been sort of sluggish and sleepy during the day. she doesnt move around much and hasnt been eating or drinking much either....
since today was my first day to spend with her at home i thought i would clean off her vent area with a nice warm bath (she was quite pasted up for some reason)....
as i gave her a bath (which she HATED btw) i noticed not only is she sooo skinny but her bottom area under the vent is quite swollen (i think??). it is hard to say HOW swollen bc i have never actually bathed a hen prior and gotten to see their bottoms so closely.... as we have only kept birds for one year.
i decided to let her out of the run with the others to graze after the bath but she was walking slowly and oddly and wasnt interested in grazying at all.
i now have her in her own small box with some oatmeal and water mixed with ACV....there is a heat lamp too. i keep going to check but she is just standing there, not lying down, not moving, not eating...nothing.
i dont know what is wrong with her. could she be eggbound? the odd thing is that the last few days (about a week) we have been getting four eggs a day (four hens)....it JUST warmed up here in montana and during the cold winter we got about two eggs a day.
so this is why im not so sure.....
please help!!! thanks
katie

Hi k8ecoyle !
I posted last night about my chicken- sounds like we are in the same exact boat. I set her in the sink yesterday bcause of a poopy butt, but the vent looked fine . Today is a whole different story. I brought her in for another " spa treatment" and noticed how thin she got, and her vent was definately bulging. I could only compare to yesterday, as I never bathed a chicken or looked close at a vent either.
I did some searching here on eggbound, and it seems like the warm baths are good. I tried giving her some bread soaked in milk for calcium, but she wants no part of it. I tried squirting some olive oi around her vent, but I think I'll have to maybe squirt some IN the vent.
It doesn't look good- seems most of the stories I read, the human had to intervene. I'm keeping her quiet, and trying to give her calcium and watered down gatorade because shes dehydrated.. Shes had 2 baths today, and I'll be giving her a third in a few minutes.
If you do a search for "eggbound" there is alot of advice.

Well, you made a good first move, isolating her. Now you will be able to tell if she is laying or not. Did you compare her vent to your other chickens?

Try to keep her hydrated. You can mix 50/50 Pedialyte and water for her. Have you tried dipping her beak in the water? You can also try vitamins just for the heck of it. I use Poly-Vi-Sol liquid baby vitamins (no iron) 3 drops a day on the beak for a week.

If she really won't eat you can try some hard-boiled egg.

Some people say Preparation H is soothing.

Good luck to both of you.

here is the proceedure I would do

As what ever is wrong either egg bound or absorbing egg inside it effects the nervous system
so do this for the effected chickeen

(1 and feed the chicken water with apple cider vinegar
1 tbsp to pt of water
Do this till after the chicken is better. Should be able to put the ACV water in a small waterer for the chicken

(2 immediately give the chicken 1000 mg capsule of liquid Vit E by cutting the end of the capsule and taking the vit E capsule and let the oil run into the chickens beak

(3 also need to crush a vit B complex pill in a tbsp and put it into a tsp of water and put it in the chickens beak after it is disolved
Do both Vit's twice today then for 7 days till you see some improvement in the chicken

then give twice a week for two weeks should see much improvement

(4 generally the shock of a event like E.coli will cause chickens to have this nerve damage
the manure color is E.coli color

(5 after today I would see if the chicken will eat a
this is for one chicken
natural probiotic wet mash
2 tsp of dry crumbles
3 tsp of milk sweet, sour or buttermilk
1 tbsp of non flavored yogurt
1 tbsp of applesauce on top after Vit's have been mixed in
mix good and put the
vit E liquid as directed in the wet mash
and crumble the Vit B complex tablet in a tabsp and add to the wet mash

(6 Do this twice a day for 7 days to see if the chicken is better
then do this once a day for another week then once a week for a while
this should give the nervous system some stability
with that said
check if she lays the egg okay if not put an eye dropper of olive oil in each side of the vent so the egg bound egg eill come down
then if you see it poke a hole in the egg shell and with a syringe with needle off it suck up the egg white and yolk
then take a large twissers and carefully pull out all the egg shell
now take the eye dropper and put two droppers of oil in vent

also if it is internal absorption feed with the wet mash a 1000 mg of calcium pill by cutting end off and putting in the wet mash or grind up one in tbspoon and put it in the wet mash with vitamins


(7
you can email by PM for more information and include this inf so I remember what is happening

ok so ive been really busy and havent been able to post a reply since the weekend, BUT GOOD NEWS.
She is better. The day after I isolated her in her own box under the lamp, she was very lowkey. Not moving eating or drinking at all. I even dug up some worms which she barely touched! Still no pooping.
By the onset of evening I noticed that she was drinking A LITTLE bit of the water with ACV. Still no pooping.
Well, overnight she decided at some point that she was going to make an escape from the box (which was tightly closed)and we found her in the morning clucking happily and walking around the garage like nothing was new.....SO HAPPY!
We found this large (8inch diameter) puddle of i-have-no-idea what, mixed with poo on the garage floor next to the box. She must have had some sort of 'blowout' and then felt great. It was a clear liquid mixed with normal looking poo, and no shell or yolk or anything like that. WEIRD?
Anyways, she has been very active and eating tons since then (sunday) and we put her back in the run with the other birds, none of them had showed any signs of illness over the last week or two since we noticed the BR getting sick.
I have no idea what the heck was wrong with her, but she is better now and back to her active clucking self, and still has not laid an egg.
It has been about five days now since her last egg.
Should i be alarmed at that?
Thanks for your advice everyone!!!!
lilbizzy i hope your hen got better.

k8e, I am so happy your hen is up and clucking around!! Ewww @ the puddle of yukkies. I hope someone might be able to identify for you what that puddle could have been. Hopefully it was a 1 time thing..
My girl didn't fare as well. I couldn't get any food or liquid into her. I gace her mutiple soaks in the sink, which she enjoyed. I did my best to squirt olive oil into her vent. I had hopes because the egg seemed to be getting closer to coming out.. She tookj a 2 hour nap, and whne she woke, I was all excited, thinking I might be able to get some liquid into her. I waked 4 steps away to get the syringe, came back, and that quickly, she was gone.

I do so hope that your hen continues to improve and whatever the problem was, I hope it is over.