Blood and discharge coming from Chicken's vent!

[Ambera]

Hello,

I have a sick chicken and would appreciate some help.
Parsnip is a 1 year old Chalk Hill Blue hybrid (a blue egg layer). She is part of a flock of 4 backyard hens, who have been kept in a cage for bird flu reasons (We are in the UK). They are fed on layers pellets with a handful of corn each day. She hasn't had any issues up until now but we noticed she has not been laying for the past week. All the other birds are fine.
We first noticed she was seriously ill yesterday.

• She has lots of poo and blood staining her vent area and below. She/the other hens have pecked her bare around her bum - we have now separated her to stop them pecking. Some of the poo is caked on now and very difficult to remove.
• She is constantly straining to pass something, her vent is convulsing.
• She still poos fairly regularly, several times an hour.
• When she has a poo, it is very small and she shudders/spasms as it comes out.
• She is very inactive, just standing with her head tucked in and her eyes shut mostly. She is not in the penguin position though.
• We don't think it's an egg problem - we are 95% sure she has layed today (we have 1 other blue egg layer to get confused with!), the egg was bloody but normal. This is the only blue egg we have seen for around 6 days.
• She still has some interest in eating and drinking, less so now we have separated her from the others. She will still investigate and eat some corn.
• The most worrying part is the blood coming from her vent, which can also be found in her droppings.

Things I have tried:

• Giving her a warm bath and drying her off, cleaning up her vent.
• Using antiseptic wipes and antifungal cream around her vent.
• Adding apple cider vinegar to their water.
• Attempting to give her some greek yogurt with some powder added (probiotics and calcium are in this chicken powder - I can get the name of it if needed). She wouldn't eat much and it was very hard to get her to open her beak.
• Separated her from the other hens.

She has gotton worse over the past 2 days, she was still looking quite perky and normal yesterday but now she doesn't want to move.
I'm thinking it's not an egg problem as she has layed successfully - potentially could it be Vent Gleet or some other infection?

Anyone got any suggestions to help her recover? Is this sort of thing fatal? We are very unlikely to be able to take her to a vet.

 

[azygous]

Your hen has some serious issues, not all of which we can know for certain, but must try to make educated guesses. Worst case, she has had a thin shell egg break inside her oviduct and it is causing lacerations of the tissue in the oviduct. What follows that is bacterial infection from the tissue wounding along with continued stress from trying to expel the material remaining.

Two things I recommend. First is to find a broad spectrum antibiotic and get her started on it immediately. The bleeding indicates injury that is probably harboring infection.

The other is to find a calcium supplement with calcium citrate and vitamin D3, at least 500mg of calcium, and give this to her once or twice a day until she appears to be feeling back to normal. The concentrated calcium will encourage contractions to expel any material left in the oviduct.

 

[Eggcessive]

It seems that she has been vent pecked, and that can cause vent damage, bleeding, and it can look like vent gleet fungal infection. Vent damage can cause bleeding, and leaking of droppings or urates which can scald the skin around the vent. Vent pecking can lead to cannibalism. Vent gleet is a fungal infection, and can cause some of the same symptoms plus a bad odor. This could be from them being in such close quarters and boredom. Antifungal creams can be used around the vent. How is her crop emptying overnight? Can you offer some scrambled egg and moistened feed, and a small bit of plain yogurt daily?