Bloody vent

[BellaLulaFarm]

One of our Amerucanas has been laying eggs streaked with some blood for the last couple of weeks. I finally identified who it was last night. She has some dried blood on the upper edge of her vent, but I don't see any injuries or prolapse. She is missing all the feathers around the vent, however, which I have seen on several of our hens and thought it could be due to mites/pulling out feathers from itching, so I dusted them all with Permethrin last weekend. The blood hasn't changed, and actually was more on the last egg than I had seen before. The egg is well formed, normal shell, etc.

Internal injury? Unseen prolapse? Pecking injury? I'm going to BlueCote the vent at night and see if it helps.

Thanks for the advice.

 

[Britney]

I hope that someone can come along with help for you. For now I would isolate her so to keep her room mates from pecking at her. good luck

 

[BellaLulaFarm]

Update: I examined all of our chickens today, and 4 of the 12 adults have the same bloody/crusted dried blood on the upper lip of the vent. It looks like pecking--pretty injured tissue. I polysporined and Blue-Kote'd them, but the BlueKote doesn't stick or stain the vent, so I'm considering mixing bluing with triple antibiotic ointment to apply at night. Any ideas why this pecking behaviour would occur and what I can do to prevent it? I could separate the affected ones into the goat yard, but then they'd have to fight again for the pecking order when re-introduced, so that makes me nervous.