My Ameraucana hen is having laying issues and I'm not sure what the best course of action is, I hope someone here has some input.
A day or two ago I noticed a soft-shelled egg wreck in the nest box, but didn't think much of it since I'd never seen anything like it before. This morning "Beardy" had what I thought was a prolapsed vent - I just saw a big pale thing hanging out of her butt. I've done enough pleasure reading on the Emergencies/Diseases forum on BYC to realize I needed to clean her up and put it back in.
I took my son to daycare, came back home, and when I got her in the bath I realized it wasn't her insides but another soft-shelled egg hanging out. Her vent was inside, but when she would push it and it would invert a little I could see that it was very red. I soaked her in warm water for a while and she did get the egg out. It had just a little blood on it, not much. I washed her up as well as I could, put some honey on/in her vent, and put her in a laundry basket with a towel over it with water and some oyster shell/crumble/yogurt mash.
So from reading this morning it sounds like soft-shelled eggs are a calcium deficiency problem, so I'm going to up her calcium (I feel really badly for having this be an issue in the first place). I'm going to keep her inside for a day or two to hopefully give her production system a chance to rest... but what else should I be doing? Her vent is definitely black and blue, but not prolapsed.
Any suggestions would be great. FYI, she has always been the healthiest of my chickens and the most reliable layer. I put three new chicks in with her this spring, so she is at the top of the pecking order and even today was running away from me when I went to catch her. Thanks!
A day or two ago I noticed a soft-shelled egg wreck in the nest box, but didn't think much of it since I'd never seen anything like it before. This morning "Beardy" had what I thought was a prolapsed vent - I just saw a big pale thing hanging out of her butt. I've done enough pleasure reading on the Emergencies/Diseases forum on BYC to realize I needed to clean her up and put it back in.
I took my son to daycare, came back home, and when I got her in the bath I realized it wasn't her insides but another soft-shelled egg hanging out. Her vent was inside, but when she would push it and it would invert a little I could see that it was very red. I soaked her in warm water for a while and she did get the egg out. It had just a little blood on it, not much. I washed her up as well as I could, put some honey on/in her vent, and put her in a laundry basket with a towel over it with water and some oyster shell/crumble/yogurt mash.
So from reading this morning it sounds like soft-shelled eggs are a calcium deficiency problem, so I'm going to up her calcium (I feel really badly for having this be an issue in the first place). I'm going to keep her inside for a day or two to hopefully give her production system a chance to rest... but what else should I be doing? Her vent is definitely black and blue, but not prolapsed.
Any suggestions would be great. FYI, she has always been the healthiest of my chickens and the most reliable layer. I put three new chicks in with her this spring, so she is at the top of the pecking order and even today was running away from me when I went to catch her. Thanks!
