This girl is one of my beautiful, dark cherry Rhode Island Reds that I hatched from Bama Chicken over a year ago. I saw her in the nest at roost time a couple days ago, thought she was going broody like everyone else, and when I removed her from it, noticed she was very thin. She is growing back her feathers from her molt, so I figured that she was a bit thin due to her need for extra protein. Tonight, she was in a nest again at roost time. When my DH pulled her off and sat her on a roost bar, her tail was pointing straight down. I asked if she was the thin one and she was. When I examined her, I found that her vent was small and dry like she had not been laying in ages. With three of these look-alike dark red girls, I had no idea that one wasn't laying. Seems I always see one on a nest in the middle of the day. Apparently, not her, though.
Just like we did when my Barred Rock, Ivy, was in bad shape with the same ailment, we have started her on a course of penicillin injections as a shot in the dark to save her, and we did, but my RIR is nothing but skin and bones and I don't hold out much hope for her. Here we go again with this salpingitis stuff.
Diseases of Poultry By Y. M. Saif and H. John Barnes has an excellent article on salpingitis and egg peritonitis and if you look at Google Books, you can read excerpts from that very pricey reference book on this. Here is a link (hope it works) http://books.google.com/books?id=oBloqeMWktMC&pg=PA639&lpg=PA639&dq=salpingitis+disease+of+poultry&source=bl&ots=6DfwCUkX5t&sig=EWMHb8szohrJ_JqL-jjP8evgFmQ&hl=en&ei=T_NoSqqSKtOCtge75vS_Cw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7
For those who don't know, this can start as an ecoli infection in the oviduct from a loose cloaca allowing feces to be sucked back into the wrong channel, according to Diseases of Poultry. That is more common among high-production birds, which would seem to explain why hatchery stock seems more prone to this illness. I've also heard that internal laying is a hormone and/or genetic issue. There is no cure for it and no way to prevent it, though, in my opinion, birds who go broody and take long breaks from laying are not as prone to this as those who never break for raising chicks or even break very long to molt.
Just like we did when my Barred Rock, Ivy, was in bad shape with the same ailment, we have started her on a course of penicillin injections as a shot in the dark to save her, and we did, but my RIR is nothing but skin and bones and I don't hold out much hope for her. Here we go again with this salpingitis stuff.
Diseases of Poultry By Y. M. Saif and H. John Barnes has an excellent article on salpingitis and egg peritonitis and if you look at Google Books, you can read excerpts from that very pricey reference book on this. Here is a link (hope it works) http://books.google.com/books?id=oBloqeMWktMC&pg=PA639&lpg=PA639&dq=salpingitis+disease+of+poultry&source=bl&ots=6DfwCUkX5t&sig=EWMHb8szohrJ_JqL-jjP8evgFmQ&hl=en&ei=T_NoSqqSKtOCtge75vS_Cw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7
For those who don't know, this can start as an ecoli infection in the oviduct from a loose cloaca allowing feces to be sucked back into the wrong channel, according to Diseases of Poultry. That is more common among high-production birds, which would seem to explain why hatchery stock seems more prone to this illness. I've also heard that internal laying is a hormone and/or genetic issue. There is no cure for it and no way to prevent it, though, in my opinion, birds who go broody and take long breaks from laying are not as prone to this as those who never break for raising chicks or even break very long to molt.
