Lash egg, sick hen? Help, please!

[EmmaDonovan]

Found this egg at about 11PM tonight when I went out to check on the flock during an incoming storm. The egg was not in a nest box.

The shell is softer than a regular egg but it was still shell-like, not squishy. Inside was just egg white. I didn't see a yolk but there were lot of pine shavings stuck to it so it's possible the yolk was gone by the time we found it. There was nothing solid inside that we could find.

We're fairly certain it was laid this morning by a 20 week old RIR named Ruby. She was lying down in a corner, hunched over, with her head down and her rear end up. Her eyes were closed. We brought her inside and put her in the coolest room in the house (it's nearly 90F outside). Her eyes are open and she seems alert. She is okay with being handled but she feels like a big lump of lead and she is not moving. She hasn't made any sounds. I haven't seen her drink any water.

She pooped once. Apologies for the extreme poop close up:

Any ideas what might be wrong? How can we help her?

 

[EmmaDonovan]

Update: I kept checking on her and she seemed to sleep for a while but was up and moving around the last few times I looked in on her. By 4AM she was wide awake, active, and pecking around for a way out of the tub.

I kept an eye on her for a bit. She seemed fine, was happy to get some pets, wanted to push past my hands to get out of the tub, so we returned her to the coop. She didn't feel like a lead weight when I picked her up. She was a bit squirmy like, "Hey, there's my home! I want to go there!"

She walked around the coop, checked everything out, ate a few snacks she found, drank a little water, and basically looked and acted completely normal.

Maybe she had just overheated a little? She seems like her old self now. I'll check on her again after sunrise but so far so good.

 

[Sally PB]

At 20 weeks, she's probably just starting to lay, correct? If so, her "egg machinery" is still working out the kinks in the system.

A lash egg has soft-solid material, since it contains pus. Chicken pus is not liquid, it's more like a meaty/cheesy substance.

This is the lash egg my hen laid last February. No shell, just a membrane, and a meaty bit in it.

Keep an eye on her, but I think maybe you're right, she was just too hot.

Poop pictures are fine. If you have chickens, you get past the ick factor pretty quickly.

 

[Sally PB]

"Lash egg" is an infection in the reproductive tract, ie, salpingitis. I think your pullet might have just laid a soft shelled egg.

Do they have access to a source of calcium? Either layer feed, or a dish of oyster shell? Soft shells indicate a lack of calcium, but are very common as pullets get started laying.

If you have a cockerel/rooster, a dish of oyster shell on the side is a good idea. Roosters and non-laying chicks/pullets/hens don't need the calcium in their feed. Long term, the high levels of calcium can lead to health problems for cockerels/roosters.

 

[EmmaDonovan]

Thanks everyone for the help! I see now it obviously wasn't a lash egg. I panicked a bit. We've collected 62 eggs since they began laying on July 29th. All of the eggs have had excellent shells except for that one. We've only had six brown eggs so I agree that was likely someone's first egg. We didn't get any brown eggs today.

The flock has two bowls of oyster shell. We don't have any boys (that I know of) so we just let them eat as much as they want.

Ruby is back to herself and has behaved completely normally all day. I don't know what exactly made her feel bad last night, it may well have just been the heat.

We keep six 18 gallon plastic tubs at the ready inside the house, so we can bring in any of the hens immediately if they look like they're struggling. When we're not outside we keep an eye on them via the coop camera.

We've only used the tubs twice so far this summer. Both hens were fine after a few hours of cool and quiet.