RIR with egg on her butt

[3cravns]

We have 13 hens and one of our RIR today looks like she has egg smeared in her feathers under her vent. She seems to be off by herself today with her feathers fluffed out and eyes closed at times. My son held her so I could take a couple of pictures. One shows just the smeared mess and the other shows the vent. Seems to look fine to me. Before I took the picture that shows her vent I did use a small squirt bottle of warm water to try to rinse off the feathers. I didn't spray it on the vent at all. All of the other girls seem to be fine. Everyone has been acting and eating normally. One thing lately though is that we have gone from getting between 10 and 12 eggs per day to getting 3 or 4. Are the two of these things related? Like I said, everyone else is acting normally.

 

[ChickLover98]

Just stick her in a tub of semi- warm water and use an old wash cloth to wash it off. You might have an egg eater on your hands. Have you found any shells or other residue?

 

[3cravns]

We did find a couple of broken/eaten eggs throughout the course of the winter but I think the breakage was mainly due to traffic jams in the nesting boxes and the eating an after thought. We have 5 boxes for the 13 hens but they all seem to prefer 2 of the boxes and the light brahma's like to sit in there all day creating back ups. So the fact that she doesn't seem herself shouldn't concern us? I will take her in and finish cleaning her off just wanted to get the pictures posted asap.

 

[Animalian]

Has she stopped laying? an egg could have broken inside her and its contents has just leaked out...

 

[3cravns]

She seems back to herself today. We didn't have much chance to observe her yesterday as we were gone all day to a funeral. What happens if the egg breaks inside her? Do they eventually poop them out? Thinking back that looks like what happened, her back side was a mess.

 

[Animalian]

An egg breaking inside a hen can be fatal. They can get Egg Yolk Peritonitis and its very difficult to treat even with antibiotics.Some vets recommend a hysterectomy, but birds don't do well with surgery. Some hens have been able to poop it out though. Just make sure you keep her warm. Apparently sitting her in a warm bath can help her pass things as well.

You say egg production is down. How old are your hens?
They could be laying their last eggs (hen menopause) which can cause the shells of the eggs to become soft or abnormal in some other way. She could have just laid a soft one and crushed it. That could also explain why the eggs are getting broken during 'traffic jams' as you say.

If their age is not the the case I'd give your hens some yogurt, cheese or something to boost the calcium in their diet, a calcium deficiency can cause thin shelled eggs that would be more likely to break than normal ones, plus you simply don't want soft shelled ones. You can also feed them their egg's shells for a calcium boost. Just smash them up so they're not recognizable as egg shells and roast them in the oven or under the grill to get rid of any bugs the egg layer might have.

Good luck

 

[3cravns]

Thanks for the info, I assumed an egg breaking inside would not be good. Our hens were one year old in May. They shouldn't be done laying yet, should they? We do offer oyster shell free choice and I have been giving them back some of the egg shells. I'll start giving them some cheese. I wondered if the decreased egg production was due to a molt but that is the wrong time to be molting isn't it? Of course or chickens do things the way they want so it wouldn't surprise me. Goofy things!