Chicken with swollen bare butt

[Porch Chickens]

Hi, I've been doing some research on here about what might be wrong with our Buff Orphington, Lemon. She was molting recently, and I just thought it was taking longer to get her feathers back on her pad. It was taking so long, though, that I decided to look on here just in case, and found people mentioning the bare area feeling like a water balloon. I compared her to her sisters, and sure enough, she's got the water balloon butt. This is the area below her vent. It's where the intestines are, according to the diagram on this site, so I guess that's her abdomen.

She is eating very well and laying an egg every day for at least a couple of weeks now, since finishing her molt. She acts normally, and a few feathers are even starting to come in fully on the bare area, but she's definitely full of fluid back there. There are no hard or solid feeling areas. I gave her a thorough going over, massaging the whole area, and it didn't seem to bother her at all. No struggling or flapping to get away.

She has always laid very large eggs-- twice as large as a regular X-large egg from the store, poor thing, and often funny shaped. Her eggs have also always had fine and large lumps of calcification on them, or sometimes a white film of calcium all over the brown egg, or a very dark ring at the top, almost black. We call them sandpaper eggs, and they must be miserable to lay!: (

Since she's laying her egg every day, I'm guessing this is not a case of egg bound or internal laying, thank God. I've ordered oral Baytril to be delivered overnight. It's the same form and dose the vet gave one of our other birds last year, and I still have a couple of doses of that prescription left, so I started her on it today and can continue with the new stuff when it arrives tomorrow.

I've also started giving her plain yogurt with live cultures and apple cider vinegar in her H2O.

Any advice would be appreciated. Of course we love all of our birds-- they are all pets with benefits.: )
Thanks so much,
Monta

 

[seminolewind]

I don't know any advice to give you. Do you have any idea why she got that way? Could it be an allergic reaction? Or is her abdomen full of fluid?

 

[Porch Chickens]

Absolutely no idea how she got this way. I only noticed it was swollen (does feel filled with fluid) once I read posts by others mentioning this in connection with having a butt bare of feathers.

 

[Porch Chickens]

Update on Lemon with Photos:
I have Lemon on Baytril now and she immediately stopped laying, which is good, since her eggs are so large and abrasive! One poster on here said her birds went steril after having Baytril. That wouldn't be a bad thing, for Lemon-- I feel so bad for her laying these eggs!

Her pad feathers already seem to be coming back in faster and her butt does feel less squishy. In addition, a couple of red sore areas that looked like they may have been caused by getting a couple of pecks were immediately healed-- amazing! Maybe she had a bit of infection going, although those wounds did look rather superficial. I don't think this problem was caused by pecking. She's a very big, dominant bird in the flock. But the condition may have attracted some pecking.

I've read that the abrasive eggs with large lumps of calcium can be from too much calcium in the diet. I don't think this can be so in this case, since she gets the same food the other 5 birds get and they all lay normal, smooth eggs. I wonder if her eggs are so big and rough they just come down the pipe more slowly, picking up more calcium?

She's also had some bulls-eye marks on her eggs now and then, which they say comes from two eggs contacting each other inside the bird before laying. She lays an egg almost every day, but not two, so I wonder about that.

Here is a photo of her bald bottom, with feather growing in now, and also a nice photo of her entire beautiful self.: )

 

[seminolewind]

Wonderful to hear!

 

[Porch Chickens]

I've been wanting to post an update to this post for a while. Last I wrote, Lemon seemed to be getting some feathers back, but alas, it didn't really happen and she went through the winter with a bare butt. Fortunately for her, we live in San Diego, and last winter was mild even by San Diego standards, so she was fine. When it came time to molt again this fall, when her new feathers came in, her pad also came back in, all nice and fluffy! It's funny, it's like she missed the window of opportunity last molt to get her pad feathers back in or something and had to wait an entire year to get them back. Here she is, all fluffy again!: )

 

[Suzie]

Thanks for the wonderful updated news! She looks amazing...

All because of your great care...she is one very lucky girl!

 

[seminolewind]

I think it's nice when members come back and update.