3 yr old hen prolapsed, broken egg shell came out of her vent

[crazy huhn]

I have a 3 yr old hen who has not layed eggs for a few month now. At the beginning of the year she laid some huge eggs, bigger than before last winter. I thought that was normal, because egg size increases after laying cycle one.
Also I thought because of her age she might have slowed down laying or was taking another unusual break. A couple month ago I noticed a light prolapse which went away by itself. Today I noticed diarrhea and while I gave her a warm bath of her rear end I found a big prolapse, golf ball size and carefully I picked some broken egg shell out of her vent. So I cleaned everything up and put some hemoroid cream on and around it and pushed everything back in place. She lives in my hospital dog crate now with electrolyte/ACV water. I gave her layer crumble, scratch and yoghurt plus hard boiled egg yolk. Any other advices?
Is she actually an internal layer and I just found some broken shell today? I am so clue less.

 

[threehorses]

Quote:
When you say you cleaned her up, did you flush out her cloaca? If not please do so immediately with cool (not cold, not warm) water. You must get all the pieces out. The cool water helps reduce inflammation too - which will help with the prolapse. Then reapply the preparation H.

Does she normally eat a mixture of laying feed and scratch? If so, in what percentages? What you fed her tonight is great.

Incidentally, laying hens should have 90% or more of their feed be laying pellets or crumbles. The other 10% can be healthy grains and treats. Scratch grains are actually meant to be treats as milo is a very cheap grain. It's meant literally to be tossed out into bedding to encourage them to 'scratch' around and fluff it up in a deep bedding system. So if you were feeding more than 10% that can be part of the issue (and is very very common, so please don't feel bad about it - i did the same and that's how I learned).

I would highly recommend feeding all your laying age birds free choice oyster shell. People often believe that the calcium in laying feed is enough for laying hens. However, it's designed for a scientifically average laying hen who needs approximately 1 part phosphorus (approximately 0.5% of their diet) to 7 parts calcium (approximately 4.25% of their diet). That's called a "cal/phos" ratio, and denoted as 7:1 (7 parts calcium to 1 part phosphorus).

But some hens, good healthy hens, can need as much as 15:1. The feed manufacturers can't force that level of calcium on the average hens, so we're expected to supplement the calcium alone (not the D or phosphorus) with bioavailable and absorbable calcium. The standard for decages, and now centuries, has always been oyster shell. If there were a better choice, they would be marketing it - but there's not. It should be offered free choice so the hens that need more can self-serve, and they do.

For hens with acute (immediate) issues, you can feed one half to one whole tums tablet crushed into some wetted crumbles or cooked oatmeal for one serving. Then make sure they see the oyster shell and that it's by their feed. It also helps poultry to have granite grit available all the time as they gain weight better and absorb their feed better with a good granite grit. both oyster shell and granite grit are very inexpensive and will way more than pay for themselves in a few months of use.

In the mean time try the tums (any flavor), continue the yogurt for a week, keep her eating laying feed. Then put some of the "flour" of the crushed oyster shell (rather than pelleted) in her feed for now. The flour is the dusty flour-like part mixed in with the bigger pieces. Just mix it in her feed for two days.

Watch her droppings and vent for clinging droppings that are white to yellow in color. If she becomes lethargic, you could consider giving her penicillin injections (PM me). Otherwise washing the pieces out tonight should hopefully take care of that issue. The oyster shell and the D vitamins in the yogurt will help get the calcium back up.

let's start with that. I look forward to your reply.

 

[crazy huhn]

Thank You for your detailed reply.
I flushed with warm water (Yikes, I did not know....). I think I got all the egg shell pieces out, but did not use a syringe with Peroxide like some posts on here recommend, just plain warm water and for the dirty feathers a little shampoo.
Her normal food is layer crumble, available free choice. In the evenings all 14 of my chickens get about a handful of scratch grains. However, I bought a Purina flockraiser block a week ago, which contains molasses, so maybe the "runs" comes from that (no additional scratch has been offered since). All but one other older chicken are fine. The other older one has some diarrhea , too.
Free oyster shell and grit (also with some oyster shell) has been available free choice to them since day one I got them almost 3 years ago, so nothing has changed here. It has been warm here, so that might have an impact on there general food intake. Maybe I should crush the oyster shell even more to the "flour" consistency you have described here and mix it into the crumble. Shall I still mix in some "Tums" in addition?
I started to put them on this diet today 2 hrs before sunset, but she did not really touch it. Will see how she is tomorrow morning, will keep you posted. May have to give penicillin injections.

 

[threehorses]

You didn't have to know - you're not expected to have all the answers all the time.

I'm glad it sounds ilke there were some egg shell pieces IN that came out. Good - better out than in. And I agree - NO peroxide for in a vent. That's for wounds, not a vent. Always cool water in a vent. That's how the textbooks say to do it, that's the best way of cooling the tissues and cleaning out the stuff. If you did anything more, you could use a very gentle cleanser like Nolvasan diluted to nearly nothing in cool water. But never peroxide on mucus membranes.

Incidentally, flock raiser is also not a laying feed. It says to raise a flock, but it's labeled "to" laying - which means after that they need laying pellets. The calcium is for growing birds. (I use it here for younger birds to laying.. it's a nice feed.) Your diet sounds great - though I'd recommend the layer again for the layers. If the hen was borderline for calcium, that might have pushed her to just not quite make it with this egg.

The molasses in that feed is a small amount so it shouldn't be a problem. I suspect there was something else going on, but usually a little yogurt handles beginning slight runs, electrolytes in the water replace what they lost. Unless you happened to feed any fruit. Then again sometimes in the summer they drink a lot of water. By the time we find their droppings, the water they produce ("urine") breaks up the solids of their wastes (feces and urates) and it looks like diarrhea. And of course there are the cecal feces. But then again summer heat is enough to stress a bird into slight diarrhea, too. I think you're right on that, and since you have everything else yes - I'd try that. Also if you have cod liver oil or wheat germ oil, or even a regular vitamin/mineral package for hens, you could give them either (spray oils on feed, use package in water) to provide a little vitamin D. Vitamin D might not have been sufficient in the flock raiser (as it's at levels for low calcium, not higher calcium of layer feeds) to help them absorb the calcium of the tums and get the layer feed back in them.

If you cleaned her out that well, you might not have to do injections. And she was probably more worried about roosting time and didn't take the feed. I wouldn't be very concerned about that yet, but I'm curious how she eats today. And yes - taking the flour from the oyster shell (I get mine from the bottom of the bag) could help - but the tums might just be easier really. You could even just put that in her personal feed if you can get it to stick.

I'm thinking heat stress, heat decreasing consumption, combined with change of feed. I hope it should be easily remedied unless she's hiding something else from you. You know how they do that sometimes, as it's their nature. Please do let us know however.

 

[crazy huhn]

First of all: threehorses, you rock!!! You have no idea how much all your input and thoughtfulness is appreciated, because all my chickens are much loved pets.

So, this is what is going on today: The hen in question did eat some crumble and scratch, not much yoghurt or egg yolk. I observed her drinking electrolyte/vitamin water with ACV. I bought some mealworms for her and she was really crazy about those.
Finally in the evening I checked her vent again and it looked absolutely normal from the outside, but maybe a little swollen around the area. However, I carefully checked again for any shell residue inside and applied the hemoirroid ointment again.
I agree, that something else might going on: of and on over the last few month I noticed some poop which was a little greener than normal (I know it is a sign of moldy food or some other kind of intoxination, but I really do not know of any and I have investigated that already). When I picked her up yesterday and today, I also noticed that she was kind of skinny and some fluid/slime with even three of the mealworms I gave her about an hour earlier, came out of her beak. Odd, odd, odd.....
I bought some Duvet brand Ivermectin Pour On (searched for Eprimex, but the difference is only the brand name, correct?) today, too, just because she is skinny, however, I do want to wait a little bit with that as she is not 100% OK yet. Is the dosage of 1/4 cc correct?

 

[threehorses]

Quote:
Oh you know, even my 'serious birds" i love as pets. Always have - so that's why I do it.

Because I know how people feel!

Eating the crumble & scratch is great, the yogurt doesn't need to be much. Just so she gets some. Good on staying hydrated (tho I'd do one or the other - probably vitamin/mineral over ACV for now) and yay for the mealyworms!

Great on getting that prolapse under control. The reapplication of PrepH was great! It's a vasoconstrictor and will help reduce the vent swelling. Good job. And especially good to hear the pretty-close-to-normal appearance of the vent.. Nice.

As for the secondary, possibly a slow crop due to (???). Can you think of anything that she could have gotten into? Then again this kind of stress can cause a slow digestive tract and diarrhea. That's where the yogurt comes in. So maybe the ACV after all? I wonder if you could put polyvisol drops on mealyworms?

Just watch her crops in the morning; make sure it's emptying.

What is the active ingredient of the Durvet? Is it "ivermectin 5%?" A blue liquid? If so, and she's an average hen, it's 5 drops on a naked patch of body skin (back of neck has the least down, easier to get a naked skin spot). If she's skinny - how long has it been since the last worming again? If it's been a while, mayyyybe consider wazine (piperazine 17) first and then ivermectin in 2-4 weeks. But agreed to get her back at least somewhat normal for a week.

I'm pretty excited about the vent not popping out. All in all I think she's coming along nicely and a few more days of goodies should do her great. She's a lucky girl that you were able to take good care of her. Thank you for doing that. It's always a pleasure to know that there are people out there really trying to do their best by these birds!

/hugs

 

[crazy huhn]

She passed this tonight. Hard to take a photo. Odd.....

 

[crazy huhn]

The above photo is about the original size of that odd flesh piece. I have cut it open and inside were 3 smaller pieces in shapes of cashew nuts.

Today my girl eats and drinks better and seems more alert. However, I want to leave her in my hospital crate for a little longer to observe and treat the vent issue and most likely to give her the ivermectin as well.
If de-worming, should I deworm them all at once? I would hate that, because all my other chickens seem OK and are laying eggs pretty well at this time of the year. I would hate to throw all those eggs away.

 

[threehorses]

I can't tell if that's cooked yolk, or what? To me it looks like a shell-less egg that has been inside her and finally made its way back to the egg-funnel and cloaca and was passed.

I'd definitely keep her up for another week or so to see a good improvement and maybe some shells instead of weird bits of something like that?

You could try worming her, and then worm them all when their production drops. When were they wormed last again?

It's hard to tell from the picture - is that "thing" all in one piece, like in a membrane as a yolk would be? Do the smaller bits look at all like anaything she might have been eating passed through solid? Or more like flesh, possibly a little sloughed intestinal lining?

 

[crazy huhn]

All my girls get DE on a regular basis with their feed. Never de-wormed with anything else. I was thinking of doing the "Wazine" first, but really want to nip it in the b... quick.

The weird thing seemed to be all flesh, the pieces inside, too. No membranes or anything that could have looked like a future egg, egg yolk or so, so it sure could be some intestinal lining.