egg yolk peritonitis questions

[HSerChickLady]

We've lost a few hens over the past few months and our local vet couldn't find anything so she finally had me send one of them to Cornell to have a full exam done. Everything that they tested for was clean which is great-that means my girls are healthy. But they did find that particular bird died from Egg Yolk Peritonitis. Since all the birds have exhibited the same symptoms they're assuming the same cause of death for each case except for possibly one.

I had never even heard of this before and never had anything like this happen before through all the years i've kept chickens. The vet said there's nothing i can really do to prevent it except watch their weight. I haven't found much else online either. I am wondering however if certain feeds or feed values might exacerbate this? It all started shortly after we'd made a feed switch so i've put them back on their prior feed. We were also wondering if it could be caused by the GMO grains in the feeds these days? Never happened when i used to keep hens but there also wasn't GMO grain around then either in the 90's. Our only other thought was if production strains or hybrids are at greater risk? All but one of them has been a production red or a RIR. The other was a Wyandotte (this was the Cornell tested bird).

Any info you might be able to share about this would be greatly appreciated. We don't want to lose anymore of our girls if we can help it. And we want to expand our flock into a business eventually and would like to know more about preventing this before that time comes.

 

[Eggcessive]

I am not an expert on this, but a lot of people ask for help about this, and I have been reading a lot of old threads here and reading some links by poultry experts. It seems to be most common in high production hens, and since most hatchery breeds are slightly mixed to increase their egg production, it is getting more common. Also people tend to keep more chickens as pets instead of butchering them after a couple of years, and they tend to get EYP or internal laying issues from the age of two onward. I won't comment on the GMO issue since my family thinks Cheetos is a food group, LOL. One common problem with the production birds is that they lay huge eggs every day, and over-sized eggs, soft shell eggs, or becoming egg bound can damage the cloaca which can begin the problem if an egg breaks inside or doesn't come out properly, setting the stage for infection. Most of this is over my head, but by using the search at the top of the page, many experts such as Speckled Hen have written threads about their hens and helped others. I have decided to get hatching eggs from old lines of heritage breeds that a lot of BYCers are trying to preserve, and raise chickens who only lay normal sized eggs 3-4 days a week, and hopefully live for 10 years.

 

[HSerChickLady]

Thanks a lot. I'll do some snooping around here later and see what i find for more info. There's probably not a lot more i can do except i do know i'll be using a different hatchery next time for several reasons so maybe that will help some with future birds. I have 3 different batches of hens mixed into 2 flocks and i purposely went with older/heritage breeds for the 2nd and 3rd batches and they have been much healthier than the "production reds" i got in the first batch.