Emergency!!! Egg bound hen with Huge egg visible inside vent please help!!!

[Allsfairinloveandbugs]

I originially read this as meaning there were two more eggs, that crunched, in addition to the one you knew was stuck.
Now I see you meant the one egg went "crunch" several times.

It's ok; no need to go under the chair. Though it was true I didn't take Extreme care while removing the fat, my knuckles shouldn't have broken a normal eggshell, only one that was already very thin or cracked/broken. A broken egg may also explain why the vent tissue on her right side was such an injured mess. If cracked egg shell cut the tissue as she strained to expel it. And my second desperate attempt to get the egg out made the vent injuries worse. The egg was normal size and shell thickness on the half that was not broken, even though somewhat rounder shape than normal. I don't want to go too far off on a tangent in case my theory is not correct, but it's really the only thing that makes sense.

 

[Allsfairinloveandbugs]

I just had a similar problem but she ended up getting the egg out. Look how tiny it was I am a little concerned. Should I be concerned? The big egg ended up pushing the small out. View attachment 3038888

Many hens if they live long enough will lay a fairy (tiny) egg eventually. Maybe more unusual for a normal egg to push a fairy egg out. You might post that photo and your question in the "Chicken Behaviors and Egg-laying" forum and see what people have to say. Hopefully it's a one-time occurrence and she will resume normal egg-laying.

 

[Lenny loves chickens]

Many hens if they live long enough will lay a fairy (tiny) egg eventually. Maybe more unusual for a normal egg to push a fairy egg out. You might post that photo and your question in the "Chicken Behaviors and Egg-laying" forum and see what people have to say. Hopefully it's a one-time occurrence and she will resume normal egg-laying.

Oh shoot I thought I did. I clicked on the wrong message in my notification box....sorry

 

[3DFowlFarm]

To clarify, yes my Shelly died Monday. It was obvious her bodily functions were shutting down and she was dying before my eyes. When I offered her wiggly live mealworms Monday morn, her eyes flashed with excitement for a brief moment. But then she pecked half-heartedly at a worm before looking away. She had that "far-away" look i've seen before in other loved dying animals. That look combined with the fact the 3rd calcium tablet didnt cause contractions told me clearly it was time to let her go.

She has been refrigerated since Monday. I needed time to recover from the ordeal a bit before doing the necropsy. Last night I opened her up, and was aghast at what I saw. And that was before i ever got to the cloaca.

First of all, @Wyorp Rock , when you said "That looks like a lash egg", the whole ordeal suddenly made sense. When I first discovered her situation, this is what I saw.
View attachment 3035686

She was 1) in the nest box 2) strenuously straining to expel something. 3) I saw part of a brown "something" that appeared to be the same brown color as her eggs. 4) Egg yolk drained from her vent as I picked her up.

All the above led me to assume she had a stuck egg. After the first calcium citrate tablet, she was only able to push a little more of it out. After muscle contractions stopped, the egg receded back into her vent. I could reach my finger inside and feel the leading edge of it, and that was all.

I gave her the second calcium citrate tablet later that same eve. And was so focused to not further damage the prolapsed tissue while getting a finger behind the egg to pull it out, that i never even looked at the "egg" itself. The photo below was the most it was ever exposed.
View attachment 3036424
Real egg shells don't have bumps and ridges. Right in front of my face and I didn't see it. Lesson learned. Neeeever again will I post on this forum asking for help unless I am also able to post photos. That wasn't fair to those who tried to help save her, and it wasn't fair to my girl. If I had realized I was fighting a lash egg, I would have known she couldn't be saved.

All I just said remains true, even though turns out it wasnt a lash egg.

So last night I expected to open her up, find classic salpingitis, post evidence of my mistake in thinking it was a real egg, and that would be The End.

Umm.

NECROPSY
When I lifted her breast up, I was mortified.
A thick layer of fat covered all organs except her elongated liver lobes. Intermingled with all the other organs, more fat. Lots more. The second photo was taken after I removed some fat to see the organs better.
View attachment 3035710

View attachment 3036306

Assuming the cloaca held only a lash egg, I didn't take extreme care when I removed some of the the inter-organs fat. My knuckles inadvertently crushed an egg shell that i couldn't yet see. Twice. Both times I heard it crunch. The shell was surely thin since I didn't brush against it That hard, but it was otherwise a normal egg. In the 3rd photo below, the yolk spilled out near her left shank. Meaning the yolk that initially drained from her vent when i lifted her from the nest box came from another egg.
View attachment 3035746
View attachment 3036168
View attachment 3036171

But then I noticed something peculiar about the Real egg shell. It had bumps and ridges.
And there was some type of "material" clinging to parts of the shell. Some places thicker than others.
View attachment 3036511
View attachment 3036504

But after the real egg shell dried, most all the bumps and ridges in the photos were gone.
View attachment 3036444

The bumps and ridges in the "lash egg" photo were an optical illusion from the vetericyn and triple antibiotic ointment I liberally applied to help lube the egg while preventing infection.
And by the time I re-looked at that photo, I was emotionally exhausted, and so assumed I overlooked an in-my-face lash egg.

There is nothing else in the vent. No disgusting blob of an onion-layered lash egg. There is Nothing there except for some nasty looking discharge that also drained from her vent while she was still alive.
View attachment 3036520

It was a real egg.
Yet extracting the egg by any means possible still wouldn't have saved her.
Nothing was what I expected to find when I opened her up.
I'm flabbergasted.

My condolences, thank you for your courage to help educate. She was a gorgeous tough girl, HUG.