Help! One of my ladies has a problem

[wmroth]

I have 7 golden comet hens. They are 14 months old and they have been laying since last October. This spring one of my girls looked a mess. She had a white substance covering her feathers below the vent. I contacted some local chicken lovers and they said that some chickens are just messy and not to worry. After a few weeks I noticed that the feathers below the vent were sparse and the skin was inflamed so I cleansed the area with some water. The next day she looked much better, but within days she was back to her same messy self. I checked her out and noticed that a white substance was leaking out of her vent. Her skin and feathers below the vent were completely coated with this substance. This looked like the chicken’s urea so I called a vet about her.

The vet suggested I isolate the chicken and start her on tetracycline and yogurt. He felt that she had a urinary tract infection. After 10 days on that regimen, she looked no different. I phoned the vet again and he put her on tylan for 15 days. He said that he would talk to a poultry expert at Penn State to see if she had any ideas.

After the 15 days the chicken had not improved, and the expert had no idea what her problem was. So every couple of days my wife and I have been washing the chicken off since the urea seems to actually cake around the feathers and rot them off and produces a burned skin. She eats, drinks and lays normally, is not lethargic, has clear bright eyes and a healthy wattle, no mites. But she has a constant leak of this urea; we are fearful that if we can’t keep cleaning her up, this will cause her demise. (She suffered an attack from a hawk with laceration to her lateral back mid summer 2008 but healed nicely and showed no health problems stemming from the attack; we detected this leaky vent problem early spring February/March ’09.) All my chickens are kept in a coop with a large pen area (I fear a hawk attack). I feed them layer crumble and try to leave them free range for and hour or so every day. With fall and winter coming, we wonder if she will be okay with a “bare butt”, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[speckledhen]

Urinary tract infection? They dont really have a urinary tract, per se. Odd choice of words to use. The white stuff on top of the poop is the "urine". I dont know what the issue with your hen is, though. Wish I could be more help. Tylan is for respiratory illness, so I'm not sure why he'd give you Tylan. Sounds like he's using the "shot in the dark" method.

 

[bobsgirls]

We have two hens that have the same thing. We wash them up and were told to use lotermin (yes the athlet foot cream on the area to avoid any infection they are looking better but it will take daily cleaning an cream.

 

[LynneP]

I'm wondering if she is a bit loose, not loose enough for a prolapse, but just enough that her vent/cloaca don't contract after laying. I'd be inclined to clean her up, apply some plain Prep H ( no added benzocaine, use the original) just inside the vent gently, and see if the urate leaking lessens. This will not harm her in any way and may give you more information on which to make future decisions. If you and the vet decide on antibiotics, it will not interfere with that, either. I'm hoping it's a tissue issue, and that once you get the tissue down, it may stay that way.

I wouldn't be too worried about winter though- I had a broody from February on (since improved to normal) and she self-plucked for 5 months with no ill effect- area the size of a bread and butter plate!

 

[wmroth]

Thanks for all your help!! I will try the Lotermin and the Prep H. The Lotermin is a daily application, but how often should I apply the Prep H?

Thanks again.

 

[wmroth]

LynneP
I checked out your page. Excellent job. A wealth of info! I started last May with my 7 golden Comets; they are beautiful birds and very friendily. Thanks for all your help.

 

[threehorses]

I'm sending you a PM but I wanted to clear up some issues that I saw here.

First poultry do actually have a urinary tract (more of a urinary system) and it is susceptible to disease, the state of the kidneys being quite important to note at the time of necropsy as kidneys are susceptible to infection, etc. It's simply a bladderless system as birds are anatomically designed for flight, a bladder being a hinderance to that end.

The urinary system of the bird is quite simple: the kidneys, and the ureter which leads to the cloaca from which urates (and the clear 'urine', water from the kidneys) are excreted.

The location of the kidneys are lateral on the back. And it's conceivable that this pullet could have been injured there during the hawk attack though more from internal damage than it sounds like the puncture. (That being said, it's been nearly half a year between the injury and onset of the current symptoms.

Also, if the hen is laying, the vent will not contract. It's a sign of laying hens that the vent will be soft, dilated, and open rather than tight and closed. So her open vent, were she in condition to lay, would not be of consequence nor would you *want* to close it with vasoconstrictors. Prolapse refers to the literal external positioning of the cloaca, the inversion of internal structures so that they are now external. Preparation H is used *after* the vent is cleaned, cooled (very important) and before replacing into the bird so that the tissue "shrinks" and is less likely to protrude out (although many cases of prolapse are due as much to the physical pushing of the bird - a feeling of needing to expel something - as inflammation).

Just some food for thought.

On this case, I'll have more later, but wanted to point out that the vet disabled his own prescription of tetracycline by recommending that it be given with yogurt. Yogurt, being a dairy product, is contraindicated for use during 'mycin or 'cycline treatment as the high amount of calcium in that dairy product interferes with the drug's mechanism of action. So likely the terramycin wasn't as effective as it should be.