My hen Heather had a prolapse two days ago after laying a very large, stress fractured egg the day before. I treated her and she's 'kept it all in' for around 12hrs now. Acting more like herself every time I check on her. I've read that it's likely to occur again. They said to keep her in the dark to stop her laying as a treatment (which I have around 24hrs now), but I'm thinking of using it as a preventative. People provide extra light in winter to encourage birds to lay, I'm wondering if I could do the opposite, that if I convert a nest box in the coop and create a very dark 'bedroom' just for her, that I could take her out late and put her in early so she always experiences a "winter amount" of light per day. This could stop her laying. So she won't prolapse again and can also stay outside with her flock. Even if it only worked for a few months, this could give her body a good deal of time to heal. Any thoughts on this or how else I can stop or lessen her laying?
Well, (said with doubt in my voice) maybe you could get her spayed. Make sure she is getting enough calcium.
I do have a avian vet about an hour away that has done hysterectomies on hens. Unfortunatly a lot will die during or shortly after because it's a major operation and birds don't handle anasthetic well. She seems a lot better today so I let her back out with the flock for a few hours so they don't forget her. She was so happy (and loud) to be outside again! She'll be coming back in for most of the day till the weekend when I can watch her all day.
I had a similar problem with one of our hens this spring. But fortunately she's the kind of chicken that will go broody at the drop of a hat, so I just collected some eggs, put them in a nest in a separate pen, and put Hermione in there, too. Within 24 hours, she had settled down on the nest, broody. So that gave her a good 3-4 weeks break from laying. Unfortunately, the hatching eggs I slipped under her turned out to be duds so she didn't end up with any chicks to raise, but the break from laying allowed her to heal up, and she's been laying fine ever since.
Yeah ever since I've been keeping Heather in the dark she hasn't laid. Thank goodness. I need to rig up her bedroom quickly, my parents are sick of the bathroom smelling like chicken! And I'm sick of cleaning the little cage twice a day! We had some tradies over to install an air conditioner today, one asked where the toilet was, I told him, forgetting to warn him Heather was in there. He was giving me such weird looks the rest of the day
