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

[Allsfairinloveandbugs]

,and jar of treats for the favorite chickens who will no doubt insist on sharing the shelter with you.

Yes that's a great idea; at least I've found a place with a signal. Except I once threw part of a sandwich to the ground for chickens at my feet. Before I could blink it seemed like a hundred hungry raptors flew up and tried to steal the rest of my sandwich. It was months before I could eat outside again without being mobbed. And I warn everyone who comes over; do Not share your meal with the chickens, or before you can react you will be mobbed and your meal devoured. Dogs I can train to "leave it." Chickens not so much.

 

[azygous]

Maybe what you need isn't a shelter by the favorite tree, but a shark cage.

 

[allbirds4me]

Contractions since calcium tablet were very weak/barely there. Yesterday after both calcium tablets, her strong muscle contractions pushed the egg out to where I could see the top edge. And I just now reached around to feel her crop. (Didn't think to do that yesterday since I was so focused on the other end.) Her crop is soft and squishy, and all she's had to eat since yesterday morn is several live mealworms. Even with syringed sugar water, i don't think crop should feel so soft and squishy.

I'm not going to palpate and try to force the egg out so I can break it, since the latest calcium tablet seems to have had little to no effect. Also, I tried Really hard to get the "egg" out yesterday after the second calcium tablet when i could see the egg and even reach inside vent and get finger behind it. (It felt like it had a shell, but a lash egg makes more sense why it wouldn't budge, especially after egg yolk and what looked like egg white drained from her vent yesterday.) She now seems in obvious shock, & her system is shutting down. If I could have posted photos yesterday someone could have likely quickly identified the problem and maybe saved her. I've tried to read and memorize all I can due to living in the woods with a poor internet signal. I think I have everything in my chicken medicine cabinet except for proper tubing supplies. Will correct that problem this week.

I wilxl do a necropsy and post photos tomorrow or Wednesday. (Doesn't bother me to do that; once the spirit has flown away only an empty shell remains.) At least we will know what was going on inside of her. Thank you for your help everyone; y'all are awesome.

sorry to hear you're giving up but your call and you're the only one who knows how bad she really is getting.
What you're seeing that you think is stuff from a lash egg is prob. from the eggs behind that one getting hung up in the tract.
Wish you'd try the mineral oil idea I left but totally up to you. If you could squirt some up in her as much as you can and as far around that egg as possible you may be able to get that egg out.
Sorry, know how tough this situation is for you both but that egg is sooo close to quite possibly being able to get it out of her.
You've done a lot and had a lot of good advice, great going !

 

[azygous]

Do you see how the reproductive tract comes off the cloaca just below the ceca? I doubt shooting oil into the cloaca would result in any oil getting to the stuck egg or enough to make a difference.

The reproductive tract needs to be offset in order that waste from the hen's body doesn't get sucked up into her reproductive tract, thus the out-of-the-way positioning of her egg works. Normally, the oviduct is sealed off from the cloaca until an egg pushes out of the shell gland, making it less likely oil will get to where its needed. Also, shooting anything into the cloaca may risk carrying bacteria from the cloaca up into the reproductive tract and causing an infection.

What may seem like a good idea can often work at cross purposes and make a bad situation worse unless you take all the facts into consideration to anticipate its possible consequences.

 

[allbirds4me]

View attachment 3032382Do you see how the reproductive tract comes off the cloaca just below the ceca? I doubt shooting oil into the cloaca would result in any oil getting to the stuck egg or enough to make a difference.

The reproductive tract needs to be offset in order that waste from the hen's body doesn't get sucked up into her reproductive tract, thus the out-of-the-way positioning of her egg works. Normally, the oviduct is sealed off from the cloaca until an egg pushes out of the shell gland, making it less likely oil will get to where its needed. Also, shooting anything into the cloaca may risk carrying bacteria from the cloaca up into the reproductive tract and causing an infection.

What may seem like a good idea can often work at cross purposes and make a bad situation worse unless you take all the facts into consideration to anticipate its possible consequences.

I fully understand and you make good points but am talking primarily about greasing up around that egg that is obvioulsy bulging out at this time and within " fingers" reach.
She has nothing to lose at this point except the hen, of course.
I've done it this way before ( on the advice of an avian vet btw ) and it worked great, just passing it along. Always did it with a sterile syringe too.

 

[tripletfeb]

I'm assuming the hen is no longer with us?

 

[Allsfairinloveandbugs]

I'm assuming the hen is no longer with us?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

 

[Wyorp Rock]

I'm sorry about Shelly.

Thank you for the photos.

 

[Allsfairinloveandbugs]

I'm sorry about Shelly.

Thank you for the photos.

I'm going to delete the photos from my phone. The vent emergency photos as well as the necropsy photos are all very ugly. And there was nothing ugly about Shelly. . She was a beautiful girl. And if there existed a chicken contest for temperment and personality, she would have been a strong contender for "Best All-Around."

I want to thank everyone for their advice and support in trying to help save her life. I appreciated every post.

 

[Wyorp Rock]

What a lovely Lady
Now that's a photo worth keeping!