Egg Peritonitis - Cured?!?

[jalyn27]

I very recently treated a hen with egg peritonitis..it took much research and process of elimination to figure out what the problem was....when I suspected egg peritonitis, I took her into my small animal vet with a challenge and she accepted. We began draining the fluid in her abdomen and on the first day took over 200ml of "egg" out of her abdomen. We began her on a 9-day inectable pen-long regimen (one injection every 3 days) and gave her a dose of Metacam for inflammation and pain. She immediately began eating, her comb had begun turning blue because of the pressure the fluid was putting on her heart and other organs and that began to slowly redden back up. On the third day, we drained another 70ml of "egg" out of her abdomen.

I put her on a scratch grain only diet and severely limited her light exposure to deter egg laying to give her time to recover. I had separated her only to keep her eating the scratch grain diet but put her back with the other hens about 4 days ago. We went out of town for a few days for spring break and came back yesterday. I noticed that she was a bit thin and noticed that she is not eating the layer pellets and the other hens have gobbled up the scratch grain. I brought her back in last night so she could get a good amount of food and rest and lo and behold, found an egg in her crate this morning.

Two questions: Is this a good sign? What did I do wrong?

 

[cafarmgirl]

A year ago I treated a very similar situation with the help of my avian vet. Hen improved at first and even laid a couple of eggs, but after a short time her health again declined and she passed away. You can treat the peritonitis but there is always an underlying cause and it will continue to flare up. If it is caused by internal laying the only cure is to spay the hen. It's a difficult surgery and many hens don't survive it.

If the vet thinks it was definitely egg that was drained out of the abdomen then your bird is laying internally. If if was just fluid then that is a little different and can have various other causes, none of them good. Draining the fluid and clearing up infection makes the bird feel better and will temporarily extend it's life but the end result is the same.