Hen with prolapse - question about egg production

[Gypsy07]

I have an eight month old pullet with a prolapse and a soft shelled egg stuck in there. She was walking around yesterday with a horribly messy rear end and a whole load of pink flesh hanging out her vent, with an egg tangled up in it all and still inside her. It was pretty disgusting and she looked extremely miserable but she's staying at the vets now and getting expert attention so I'm not looking for advice on what to do with her. She's getting painkillers and anti-inflammatories and the vet told me today that they've drained the liquid from the egg and are waiting for the swelling in her rear end to go down before they put a stitch in her that should hold things together in the future. I'm hoping she'll keep laying cause her future eggs will be paying for her treatment!

But what I'm wondering about is the whole egg production mechanism and whether it will temporarily shut down cause there's a problem in there. Or will she just keep trying to produce a daily egg and get her 'egg tubes' more and more backed up? Anyone know? I'd love a definite answer cause the whole egg production thing is a bit of a mystery to me. This is the first time anyone's had a problem and the first time I've ever wondered exactly what is happening in there every day...

 

[ZooMummzy]

I don't have an exact answer for you about what's going on in there, I can just tell you that my year old hen died last night after suffering through prolapse for a couple months. I used honey to shrink the tissue (read it on a thread here), treated her with antibiotics the vet gave me and it all seemed to work, but she never laid another egg. I honestly think she had some sort of infection going on inside that I couldn't clear up. She always ate well and acted normal till last night when she just went down in the run. The other girls started pulling out her feathers and pieces of her vent. It was gruesome and awful. I really hope your hen fairs better. Definitely look into the infection part of this issue.

 

[Gypsy07]

Oh dear, so sorry about your hen. That sounds awful. You might be right about her having some bad infection in there.

From what I understand (probably not much!) I think a prolapse is just like a hernia - primarily due to muscle weakness or injury. It's not caused by an infection, but if the tissue that has got twisted out-of-place isn't put back where it should befairly quickly, the flesh could die off due to poor or no blood supply and then gangrene would set in and the hen would die of infection.

I'm hoping that won't happen with mine as I am lucky enough to have a great avian vet who thinks he can get her all straightened out and then pop in a stitch to hold all the bits in the right place. He seemed to think it would be a fairly basic procedure so here's hoping he's right.

But does anyone know about the egg production thing?