Sick Hen... Need Help... Pics Included

[Yuki]

chickens are amazingly smart animals so she has a good chance just make sure she get water in her system and make her temp doesnt go to high and keep her comfortable and do what you can your her mom so it what your can do

 

[Keeperoflock]

Thank you Yuki for all your work and effort. She's doing well now.

 

[rebrascora]

Happy ending update for this story in the thread below...
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/update-sick-hen-need-help.1266502/

Personally I do not believe this hen had Egg Yolk Peritonitis or internal laying. I think she may just have had a glitch with her shell gland or calcium absorption. Those shell less eggs are really hard to pass and makes hens feel pretty sick. It is entirely possible that she got backed up with them and one or more of them broke in the process.
I have heard it mentioned many times about pooping yolk meaning internal laying and EYP and I would appreciate it if someone would explain how they think this is possible. Yolks that are laid internally fall into the abdominal cavity. The intestines run through the abdominal cavity but there is no opening for egg material to get into them, otherwise the waste material would come out and fill the belly with poop. Egg material can only come out via the oviduct. If an egg breaks in the oviduct or cloaca, the egg material will come out sometimes when the bird poops and there is a chance that the bird will develop an infection as a result of that egg material allowing bacteria to grow in it in the oviduct but this is not EYP and not internal laying.

Great to read that she is over this glitch. It is certainly a good idea to monitor her progress and be on the look out for any lash eggs turning up in the nest box or run in the near future but hopefully she will be fine. I would be inclined to direct supplement her with calcium for a week to be on the safe side.

 

[micstrachan]

I agree.
With regard to egg yolk in poop being a sign of EYP, I agee that is impossible.
HOWEVER... my hen had several soft eggs, including at least one that broke before it came out (egg white, followed by yolk, followed by membrane came out) right before enveloping EYP. So, while pooping yolk cannot be a symptom/sign of EYP, in my experience, it can be a sign of IMPENDING EYP or be a precursor to it. Maybe if there are enough soft eggs (from defective shell gland, IB, calcium deficiency or whatever) it causes a back up in the reproductive tract which in turn causes internal laying (which can turn to EYP). My hen seemed completely fine until the soft eggs and then went downhill rapidly from there.
Based on my (one) experience, I do wonder if hens laying soft eggs are at higher risk for internal laying and may be doing both concurrently.

 

[rebrascora]

@micstrachan
Michelle I think it may be that the residual egg material in the oviduct when one breaks, can lead to salpingitis and the resulting impacted oviduct leads to internal laying and possible EYP. I think the oviduct can possibly be impacted in different ways. I think the infection can perhaps cause it to become inflamed and blocked that way, perhaps spreading longitudinally up the whole length and preventing eggs passing into it altogether (hence internal laying) or be localised with infected material building up into a huge ball of lash egg usually created near the bottom. I think this latter probably enables more egg yolks to be deposited into the oviduct adding to the mass. Perhaps a particular part of the oviduct is more prone to that bulging when it gets infected. Maybe if the infection is higher up it leads to internal laying more often or sooner. I wonder if the lavage of your hen, resulted in bacteria being pushed up into the oviduct. The organ is not designed for passage of fluid in that direction and the cloaca is not exactly a sterile environment so it would not be impossible for bacteria from the cloaca to be washed up into the oviduct and possibly even out of the top and into the abdominal cavity in that process., I would have thought. I know very little about the procedure but just thinking about it logically.

 

[micstrachan]

Thanks. Your theory on the broken egg material leading to salpingitis makes sense to me.

I think my hen’s abdominal cavity, not her oviduct, was lavaged, however.

At the end she did pass a little bit of material that resembled chicken fat. At the time I thought it was egg, but later realized it was more likely lash egg/salpingitis.

The avian Vet said the cells in her abdominal fluid resembled inflammation cells and NOT infection cells, but he still diagnosed her with EYP. She did respond to antibiotics, later had ascites that was not yolk stained... it was clear and brown. Had I known about necropsy back then, I might have sent her in. It’s all very interesting, yet still heartbreaking.