Please help!

[TheBirdBabe]

I have a hen that's had some trouble with laying eggs lately.

Today I went to check on them since it's been raining & give them some mash. She was up on a perch by herself with her wings dropped (touching the branch). She is a weird one who will lay ANYWHERE! So I took a second to see if I could catch the egg. Well a second turned in to minutes & I felt like it was taking forever, so I had a look. There was poo everywhere & I could see she was struggling. I instantly thought she was egg bound & removed her from the coop. I took her in to the "hospital", started looking in to remedies & examples online.

Soon, I noticed that she was picking at her vent quite a bit. I noticed there was some poo stuck, so I went to wipe it away, but this came with it! I'm guessing it's an egg membrane. I'm also guessing that it's because she's lacking calcium.

I'm feeding them oyster shells, currently, but nobody seems interested in it! How can I up her calcium intake? What can I do to help her? She's not a particularly friendly chicken & does not enjoy me trying to look at her backside.

Thank you for advice in advance.

 

[azygous]

Get some of this. It's much easier to absorb than oyster shell calcium. This is what I recommend for any hen having trouble with laying an egg or laying normal shell eggs.

Give one tablet per day whole directly into her beak. Pry it open and shove the pill in.

The danger of that egg collapsing inside the hen is that it could have had a yolk and yolk encourages bacteria. If you see any sign of yolk coming from her vent, she needs to be started on an antibiotic.

Tip for making a thread: When you write your headline or title, make it tell a one sentence story about what your thread is about. It will encourage participation of those people who have had experience with your issue without needing to read the entire thread to find out what's it's about. Years later, Google and other search engines can then bring the thread up when someone hits the key words in your title, and your thread will go on helping other people for years.

 

[TheBirdBabe]

Get some of this. It's much easier to absorb than oyster shell calcium. This is what I recommend for any hen having trouble with laying an egg or laying normal shell eggs.View attachment 3122115Give one tablet per day whole directly into her beak. Pry it open and shove the pill in.

The danger of that egg collapsing inside the hen is that it could have had a yolk and yolk encourages bacteria. If you see any sign of yolk coming from her vent, she needs to be started on an antibiotic.

Tip for making a thread: When you write your headline or title, make it tell a one sentence story about what your thread is about. It will encourage participation of those people who have had experience with your issue without needing to read the entire thread to find out what's it's about. Years later, Google and other search engines can then bring the thread up when someone hits the key words in your title, and your thread will go on helping other people for years.

Thankfully I don't see any trace of yolk! It's just... poo.
I will go to our local pharmacy today & see what I can find! Should I give her less than a whole pill if she's a small breed chicken? ALSO, should I go ahead on the antibiotic just in case?

 

[azygous]

I would give the whole tablet the first dose, and you can then do half for following doses. Keep up the calcium until eggs are coming out normal. After that, you can stop the calcium tablets and let her go back to relying on oyster shell for her calcium needs.

Best not to use an antibiotic unless you know you have a bacterial infection on your hands. Watch the hen's behavior. If she is acting energetic and normal, she's fine. If she is lethargic, off her feed, and her poop is runny and with mucous, she may have an infection and an antibiotic would then be warranted.

 

[TheBirdBabe]

I would give the whole tablet the first dose, and you can then do half for following doses. Keep up the calcium until eggs are coming out normal. After that, you can stop the calcium tablets and let her go back to relying on oyster shell for her calcium needs.

Best not to use an antibiotic unless you know you have a bacterial infection on your hands. Watch the hen's behavior. If she is acting energetic and normal, she's fine. If she is lethargic, off her feed, and her poop is runny and with mucous, she may have an infection and an antibiotic would then be warranted.

Her poop is a little mucous-y. However she's still energetic & has a healthy appetite! I will keep a close eye on her for sure. Thank you for the advice, I truly appreciate it.

 

[TheBirdBabe]

I would give the whole tablet the first dose, and you can then do half for following doses. Keep up the calcium until eggs are coming out normal. After that, you can stop the calcium tablets and let her go back to relying on oyster shell for her calcium needs.

Best not to use an antibiotic unless you know you have a bacterial infection on your hands. Watch the hen's behavior. If she is acting energetic and normal, she's fine. If she is lethargic, off her feed, and her poop is runny and with mucous, she may have an infection and an antibiotic would then be warranted.

I went to the pharmacy & they did have Calcium Citrate. However, they only had it in the liquid gel form & it would have been FAR too big for my little hen to swallow!
But I saw this, I thought, "I'm trying to get them to eat oyster shells anyways.."
Will it be sufficient for now? Should I still get some Citrate when possible?

 

[azygous]

Here's the thing about calcium. It comes in several forms, not all being equally easy to absorb. The citrate is the easiest, therefore the quickest to absorb, so it's what I prefer in a crisis.

There are three different sources of calcium, all different, all digested and absorbed at varying rates of effectiveness. The most common source is calcium carbonate. This is what egg shells, oyster shell, and calcite derived calcium supplements are. It's the highest in calcium, but it's the most difficult to digest and absorb. Some hens absorb it so slowly and inefficiently that it's not able to adequately supply their shell gland. So, they often produce shell-less eggs or very thin shell eggs.

The second kind of calcium is calcium gluconate. It comes from fruits and vegetables. It's not very high in calcium and still hard to digest and absorb.

The third kind of calcium is calcium citrate. It's the by-product of the manufacturing process of making citric acid. This form of calcium is very easy to digest and absorb. For this reason, it works much, much faster than the other two types of calcium. This is the form of calcium that's best to use when a hen is having reproductive issues from the relatively minor one of shell quality to the most serious and life threatening one of egg binding.

One calcium citrate tablet with vitamin D given right into the beak once a day until the issue is resolved is what I strongly recommend. Here's what to buy.

Calcium citrate is not meant for daily use as a calcium source, only a temporary intense calcium boost in a reproductive crisis. Good quality oyster shell is still the very best source of calcium you can provide for laying hens. But be sure they're getting the large oyster shell particles and not the powdery residue left in the bottom of the container as it runs through a hens system much too fast to be properly absorbed. The larger particles remain much longer in the digestive tract allowing for much greater absorption. This will help to assure your hen is keeping her calcium stores topped off and will have less tendency to have egg issues.

Pills that seem too large for a chicken to swallow will go down much easier for a chicken than for a human. Chickens swallow things whole and their crop and gizzard do the chewing.

 

[TheBirdBabe]

Here's the thing about calcium. It comes in several forms, not all being equally easy to absorb. The citrate is the easiest, therefore the quickest to absorb, so it's what I prefer in a crisis.

There are three different sources of calcium, all different, all digested and absorbed at varying rates of effectiveness. The most common source is calcium carbonate. This is what egg shells, oyster shell, and calcite derived calcium supplements are. It's the highest in calcium, but it's the most difficult to digest and absorb. Some hens absorb it so slowly and inefficiently that it's not able to adequately supply their shell gland. So, they often produce shell-less eggs or very thin shell eggs.

The second kind of calcium is calcium gluconate. It comes from fruits and vegetables. It's not very high in calcium and still hard to digest and absorb.

The third kind of calcium is calcium citrate. It's the by-product of the manufacturing process of making citric acid. This form of calcium is very easy to digest and absorb. For this reason, it works much, much faster than the other two types of calcium. This is the form of calcium that's best to use when a hen is having reproductive issues from the relatively minor one of shell quality to the most serious and life threatening one of egg binding.

One calcium citrate tablet with vitamin D given right into the beak once a day until the issue is resolved is what I strongly recommend. Here's what to buy.

Calcium citrate is not meant for daily use as a calcium source, only a temporary intense calcium boost in a reproductive crisis. Good quality oyster shell is still the very best source of calcium you can provide for laying hens. But be sure they're getting the large oyster shell particles and not the powdery residue left in the bottom of the container as it runs through a hens system much too fast to be properly absorbed. The larger particles remain much longer in the digestive tract allowing for much greater absorption. This will help to assure your hen is keeping her calcium stores topped off and will have less tendency to have egg issues.

Pills that seem too large for a chicken to swallow will go down much easier for a chicken than for a human. Chickens swallow things whole and their crop and gizzard do the chewing.

This is so confusing. My hens don't really eat the oyster shells that I put out for them.

I know it's not exactly what you recommended, but I can't run back in to the pharmacy now. Should I skip what I purchased? Or try anything for now?

 

[azygous]

Any form of calcium is better than nothing. The concentrated supplement is better than oyster shell because oyster shell takes even longer than calcium carbonate tablets to digest. So yes, use what you bought.

 

[awagnon]

This is so confusing. My hens don't really eat the oyster shells that I put out for them.

I know it's not exactly what you recommended, but I can't run back in to the pharmacy now. Should I skip what I purchased? Or try anything for now?

so here's what I did when my girls first started laying this month and had, shell less, rubbery, and very thin shelled eggs. Luckily I had calcium citrate w/d on hand. there was no way I was gonna be able to wrangle my girls to pill them manually. So the next morning, I took 3 small plastic containers, 3 tabs in a plastic bag, a mallet to smash the tablets, and a small scoop. before i opened the coop door I mixed one tablet into a very small (maybe a tablespoon and a half) amount of feed with some water into each bowl and then I let them out. My girls are weird and come out in a very orderly manner, each one stopping at the door to check out the surroundings. I gently picked each one up as they came out and put them down right in front of a bowl. being hungry in the morning, they ate every bit of the mash. I then put the feeder in the run and they were laying normal eggs the very next day. Now I have oyster shell in a small bowl in the run and see them snack on it from time to time. I have read where they will only eat it if they need it, but not sure every chicken got that memo. lol My do girls let me pet them and sometimes pick them up, but NO WAY am I allowed to do anything around their faces. quirky little things. Luckily, I only have 3 right now.