How is she doing?
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How is she doing?
If she is acting normal, perky, eating, etc, than she will probably be fine. It has only been a few days since you discovered her, so she probably needs some more time to heal. I had a barred rock hen a few years ago that had a similar injury as your hen has. The wound smelled terrible and was full of maggots. I took her inside cleaned her up and put her back with the flock. It probably took at least three weeks but the wound healed just fine.
Do you know if she is laying currently? She has had this wound for a while, so she is either not laying, or has been able to lay with out issues. It sounds like you are doing a good job with her, I think she will be fine.
The only way to know is to wait and see. It's possible she could become egg bound. If she does, include Epsom salts in your warm bath to relax her muscles.
If the blockage won't let the egg pass, she's got about 48 hours max... You can aspirate an egg, which involves sucking out the contents of the egg with a syringe/needle and gently collapsing the egg shell to remove it.
Give her time to heal herself. You're doing a great job!
MrsB
If she's endured some kind of trauma, it's possible that her body is redirecting the nutrients from making eggs to healing her body. Making an egg may not be top priority for her.
As for the stuff to prevent her from producing eggs, that is up to you! If you feel she is a pet, I invite you to exhaust everything you can do to make her as happy and comfortable as possible.
On the other hand, it can get quite expensive, and an honest appraisal of the return on investment of utility animal should be considered.
At the end of the day, we all do the best we can for our birds, and I can tell you have a lot of love in your heart for your chicken babies.
Just watch her for any lethargy, going off food and water, or passing unusual poops.
MrsB
My pretty girl passed away last night.
The crazy thing is that she started doing extremely better. For the past two days the growth on her vent had gotten smaller. I'm wondering if it perhaps traveled inside of her. Before it started looking better I had removed the scab and saw that underneath was all kinds of crazy colors and textures. Looked cancerous. Then it just started going down. She was in the corner of her cage for a few hours, not eating or drinking and then had white chalky streaks coming out the vent. she may have been egg bound. I did not think there was anyway for her to pass an egg through that mass. Thank you everyone for all of the help. It was a learning experience.
Oh no! Sorry for your loss! I wonder is she could have had some cancer like thing? I really don't know. It's possible that the infection was a lot worse than you thought. Can you do an autopsy on her?