Broken egg inside chicken?

[library910]

A question came up, while we are trying to help one of our girls with what is obviously a broken egg inside her. I have flushed the vent with a warm vinegar and water mixture, got some vaseline inside the vent, but . . .

Try as I might, I could not feel anything even close to resembling shell pieces when I examined her internally. So I guess my question is, how do I know I am looking for the shell pieces in the right place? I would think if I were looking for pieces of broken shell, I should be inside the last length of oviduct, the part that closes off the cloaca from the intestine when the chicken lays. Or would the broken pieces just be there, inside the cloaca? Anyone here have any experience with this?

Bob

 

[mama24]

Sometimes they lay eggs without shells, ad those often break during laying. So maybe there are no shells to find.

 

[library910]

Possibly. Except there was a couple of small pieces of shell stuck to feathers outside the vent--as if she had expelled a couple of pieces, but not all of it. She is still very lethargic, showing very little interest in anything.