It was a beautiful Sunday morning and I was out on the back porch with my coffee watching my chickens wake up and come down out of the coop. One of our chickens, a red star named Gingerbread, lays an extra large to jumbo sized brown egg every morning like clock work. I saw her come down for awhile, then go back up to lay her egg, and then return to the flock in the run. I then spent a couple of hours taking my dog for a morning run and having breakfast. I went out about 9:00 to give the girls their treats and let them out of the run for the day, and Gingerbread is just sitting over in the corner. She's usually the first one to the treat bowl, so I know something is wrong. I check the egg box but there's no egg. I go in the house to get my amazing husband and we agree that she must be having trouble getting that egg out. So we give her a nice warm bath in epsom salts for about 15 minutes until she got squirmy. Then we gave her some olive oil orally and felt up her vent to see if the egg was in there, and also to oil the canal with mineral oil. I could feel something round, but not in the same area as the one my finger was in. We decided to put her in the chicken tractor so we could see if she pooped and see if she would lay on her own. After lunch she was still just standing there not moving. We knew that if she didn't get the egg out soon she would die. So this time my amazing husband went in after it. He felt all around for a few minutes and then finally pulled out some poop. I said, "Great, you found the intestinal canal. Now see if you can find another opening and find the ovarian one." So he felt around some more and said, "I feel the egg! I just turned it and she's pushing like crazy!" He took his fingers out and let her push. Her butt got enormous and then out came the egg! The egg was brown with some white places and very rough like sand paper. We think that may have been why it got stuck. Then we put her down and checked on her a few hours later at about 3:00. She was still just standing there. I put a dish of water under her nose because she hadn't had any all day, and she took a little water. Then she walked into the coop and drank from the water in there. About 15 minutes later I found her in the egg box. I figured she still felt the need to lay or something. The next time I looked out the window she was in the yard with the other girls like she hadn't a care in the world. I checked the egg box and there was an unformed egg in there. It was a large egg with no shell, just a membrane. It looked very much like a water balloon with an egg in it. She must have pushed so hard (or been so lubed up) that she pushed out the halfway formed egg she was making for the next day. Sure enough we didn't get an egg the next day. We then got a perfectly formed egg today and it's like it never happened (for her anyway - it was very traumatic for us!). We've had chickens for almost a year now and we never expected them to be this hard, exciting, or fun! My girl (and my husband) are so awesome!
The egg on the counter is the one we helped get out and my husband is holding the "water balloon" egg.
The egg on the counter is the one we helped get out and my husband is holding the "water balloon" egg.
