Possibly egg bound?

[themomathome]

Hi. My name is Kathy and my family and I are recent (5 months) owners of chickens: 3 Barred Rocks, 3 R.I. Reds, 1 Dorking, 1 Golden Lace Wyandotte and 1 Ameraucana. All are well except the Ameraucana. Yesterday she started acting odd - keeping to herself, tail down, droopy. There are feces in the coop that are runny, with what looks like white and yellow mucus and pink lumps in it. Since the others are active and acting normal, we are assuming that these belong to her. We thought as she is at an age to start laying, that she might be egg-bound, so we took her out last night and gave her a warm bath for about 1/2 hour. She seemed relaxed and comfortable there. After making sure that she was thoroughly dry, we put her back in with the others. There were 2 beige,soft-shelled broken eggs in the coop this morning, but I think that they might be the early attempts by the 5 month old Barred Rocks as the R.I. Reds have been laying for the past week; their eggs have been fine. We've seen no evidence of blue or green tinted eggs anywhere in the coop nest boxes or in the grass of their run.
If anyone has any suggestions or advice, we would be most grateful.
Thank you.

 

[elmo]

When I have a chicken I'm concerned about, I isolate her. That way I don't have to guess at which droppings are hers, or whether an egg is from her or another hen. Isolation also helps a chicken who's feeling poorly from being bullied by the rest of the flock, and if she happens to have something that's contagious, it helps avoid spreading it to the rest of the flock, too.

Even if you're using a commercial layer feed that contains calcium, you can also offer oyster shell separately free choice for those hens that need more calcium than is provided in the feed. That can help going forward with soft shelled eggs, although it's not unusual for hens just starting out laying to lay some weird eggs.

One of our hens had some trouble with an egg last spring. She sat down in the run and didn't move. The vet felt the egg in her uterus, gave her a shot of pitocin, and she laid the egg by the next morning.

 

[dawg53]

In addition to what Elmo stated, your birds are first starting to lay and sometimes there's internal issues that eventually work themselves out and produce normal eggs. Soaking in warm water for about 30 minutes helps expand their innards so that the egg can pass easier. Try massaging her underside from front to rear to help encourage her to move the egg along if it happens again.