Egg Yolk Peritonitis Prevention or Management

[smallflock3]

Emilysteng,
Can I ask how Casino is doing? Betty is not so well today and I'm thinking about the Lupron.

 

[Noble Rooster]

Hi guys! It's been a long time since I posted to this thread and it's been interesting to see everyone's progress on this issue. I finally lost one of my chickies (the girl in my avatar) to this problem last week. She would have good and bad days throughout the fall, but then in the course of a week she went from mildly uncomfortable to having a large mass in her abdomen that pushed on her intestines and eventually the nerves to her legs, so I had to put her down.

Of anyone in the flock who I would have predicted would have EYP or a similar problem, it was she because since her initial point of lay she always laid huge eggs, would seem uncomfortable doing so once in a while, and on occasion would lay a second, shell-less egg a few hours after a normal one. She was a high-production hybrid and I guess her body just wasn't quite wired right for that. I was surprised how long she was able to go before the problem got really bad; on a few of her bad days I began to wonder if her time was up, but then the next day she'd be her happy, busy self. For me the important thing was whether she was able to lead a normal chicken life and for how long.

Good luck to everyone! It's sad to see one's girls go through this and know there's not really a lot one can do to help, though I'm intrigued by the approaches some of you have taken and hope they work for you and your chicken friends!

 

[Lexikan]

I have a hen with what seems to be Egg Yolk periotinitus. Does anyone have any remedies?What do I do to make her feeel better? she is eating oatmeal with some antibiotics mixed in. I read somewhere to crush up tums and feed that to her as a diruretic?
Thanks

 

[speckledhen]

Sadly, there are really no remedies. You can dose with penicillin but that will not dissolve solid masses of infection.

The tums is not for a diuretic. It's for a big dose of emergency calcium carbonate for egg issues. It will have no effect on egg yolk peritonitis or internal laying.

 

[EweSheep]

Its almost a death sentence for these poor girls!

Sadly, there are really no remedies. You can dose with penicillin but that will not dissolve solid masses of infection.

The tums is not for a diuretic. It's for a big dose of emergency calcium carbonate for egg issues. It will have no effect on egg yolk peritonitis or internal laying.

 

[BeckySue]

I have a two year old Red Star hen with similar symptoms; lethargy, swollen abdomen, passing watery diarrhea, that sometimes has deep green solids in it. I've been taking her temperature and she's over 106 degrees. I had been treating her with penicillin and monitoring her temperature, but it wasn't going down.

My concern is that she may have EYP or lymphoid leukosis. If it's LL, this could be transmitted to the rest of the flock? I've done some searches on Ag college websites, especially the University of Florida and their literature says that LL is not easily transmitted between birds. Does anyone have any experience with differential diagnosis between EYP and LL?

My Stella has been feeling poorly for a few weeks, but only this week did she really start to slow down. I brought her into the house on Tuesday and she's living in our bathroom, with trips out to the deck in the afternoon to sun herself.

Her sister, Blanche (also a two year old Red Star), is also starting to show signs of feeling poorly. Last afternoon when we let the girls out for supervised free ranging (we have too many stray dogs in our part of the country), Blanche stayed in the coop. I checked her out and her abdomen felt swollen too, but she came out to scratch around with the rest of the flock. Now, I don't know that Blanche and Stella are really genetically sisters, but they came from the same hatchery and were hatched on the same day.

Any suggestions you can give would be appreciated. I plan to bathe Stella today and have been massaging her abdomen. I can't feel any masses.

 

[speckledhen]

The only actual way you'd know is a necropsy, however, her breed and her age make EYP much more likely. A temp of 106 is not all that high for a chicken.

 

[BeckySue]

Yes, I agree with the temp not being that high. I was three degrees over normal a couple of weeks ago, and I was still functioning.

I have the capability to remove some of the fluid from her abdomen, but was wondering where I should make the puncture with my hypodermic.

 

[speckledhen]

Can't tell you an exact place. It's sort of intuitive, knowing where the organs are and locating the least dangerous spot and the spot where it's most "bloaty" feeling, sort of around and under from the vent itself.

 

[BeckySue]

I appreciate your assistance in this. Unfortunately, Stella bloated considerably as the evening went on and was in obvious discomfort. I had brought home some chloroform about a month ago for a chick with a slipped tendon (when she started showing obvious signs of pain, we planned to put her to sleep), and we used it on Stella. She went quietly to sleep in a little box. We're heartbroken, but know we did the right thing, poor little girl.

One thing I realize in hindsight: we were getting tiny yolkless eggs in the community nesting boxes and could never figure out who was laying them. We have been getting these for over a year now, just every once in a while. Could it be that she was forming a shell around unused albumin and passing those, while the yolks were being diverted into her abdomen? I believe now, based on what I've read, even if I had realized that it was her and that she was diverting her yolks, there's not much I could do with her except try to keep her from forming yolks in the first place. It's so hard to know which bird is affected when everyone has access to the same nesting boxes. I've struggled with this question; should I confine a hen for a day to see what type of eggs she's laying, but then with these little eggs, they come so infrequently that you don't know if that's a good day for the affected chicken. I'm rambling...

Rest in peace, little Stella girl. Gosh how we loved this little chicken.