Sick hen-Poo and egg yolk at the same time?

[jp1051]

Have a 1 1/2 yr. old sexlink. This evening my 11yr. old son noticed she was hunkered down in the run, with her feathers fluffed up and her eyes 1/2 shut. When he tapped on the wire to see if she was OK, she didn't respond. i went in the run and got her up-she immediately went to the water and started drinking. When she would dip her beak in the water, she would then lift her head to get it to go down. Did this quite a while, which was odd as its only about 55 degrees and not hot out. BTW we just lost our first chicken suddenly last week (we have had 6 chickens for about 10 mos) , so we have really been keeping an eye on our remaining 5 (not sure what happened to our other girl-she was listless as well for about an hour before she died-she seemed to loose alot of weight very quickly-she was fine when we left in the morning for work and when we came home she was in the coup and nearly dead). Anyway, our current girl went up to the coup after gulping down water and not going for any of the scratch i put down (our girls stay in a large covered run with pine shavings on the floor). I feared the same fate for her, so i opened the coup door and got her out and tried to feel her crop (i'm a newbie so only know what ive read). Didn't feel any hard lumps or buildups (they don't free range and i don't give them much of anything else except their layer pellets). I flipped her over to check her vent to see if there was anything caking up on that end and gently massaged her there for about a minute. She was still but her eyes were openned. When i flipped her back over, she totally gushed out a poo on me and also what appeared to be big ol' egg yolk. The other hens immediately started to eat the egg yolk as it landed on my foot. I found this really odd, as we got 5 eggs already today i think, which means to the best of my knowledge she already layed. She then seemed to feel much better, as she came down to join the flock and kind of pecked around. I'm still concerned about her or any disease that my flock may have mysteriously come down with, so any ideas from anyone? Sorry for the long explanation. Me and my kids have really enjoyed everything about the chickens, had a super time last summer building the huge coop thats nicer than the garage and getting eggs every day-i would just hate to have her die or worse yet the whole flock. Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated!
jp

 

[britsngrits]

I wonder if she was egg bound?

 

[jp1051]

well, thats what i was kind of hoping for instead of some infectious disease-if she was, is it weird that there was no part of the shell that came out? I know that i did not massage anywhere near hard enough to break an egg if it was in there-wasn't really massaging as was more kind of gently petting her in that area-if there is still shell fragments in there, would i be able to tell and is there a way to get them out or will they just come out with her next egg? Also, if she was eggbound, is that something i can prevent in the future? Thanx tons for your comments-like i said-i'm a 1 yr. newb to chickens so just trying to learn as much as possible:/