(UPDATED PIC LOOK)Hen with hard very large abdomen and bugs on vent Please look and any advice is ne

[terryg]

Your hen had an impacted and infected egg in her reproductive tract. This can be caused by an underlying infection -often salmonella - or, the egg laying "conveyor belt" could have been messed up, which caused the egg to get stuck and then infected (yolks are magnets for infection.) It can take quite awhile for the impaction to cause death. Often the first sign that something is wrong with your hen is when you notice lice. An ill hen can't dust bathe. Often, what people think of as "egg bound" is actually an impacted and diseased reproductive tract. I've seen this on several home necropsies, along with other issues, like tumors and ascites.
-for those thinking about doing home necropsies, search my blog archives. I have several entries about it. http://www.hencam.com/henblog/archives/

 

[speckledhen]

I'm sorry you're dealing with this. It has happened so many times here, we started seeing signs earlier in the game, then later, found surprisingly, no cooked egg on a couple when we opened them up-only fatty ovarian tumors of carcinoma and little growths all along the oviduct and intestines, plus abdomens full of fluid.

The point I'm trying to make is that there are many different ways that reproductive malfunctions can happen, in the oviduct and/or in the abdominal cavity itself when yolks deposit in there, etc, etc, etc. They can look very similar from the outside of the bird and you don't know exactly what happened until you open them up. It takes a lot out of a hen to produce a daily egg, is what it boils down to (pardon the boiled egg pun, definitely not a laughing matter). The better their genetics and overall health, the less you may see it, but the longer you keep chickens, the more you will see it.

 

[ldutch123]

Your hen had an impacted and infected egg in her reproductive tract. This can be caused by an underlying infection -often salmonella - or, the egg laying "conveyor belt" could have been messed up, which caused the egg to get stuck and then infected (yolks are magnets for infection.) It can take quite awhile for the impaction to cause death. Often the first sign that something is wrong with your hen is when you notice lice. An ill hen can't dust bathe. Often, what people think of as "egg bound" is actually an impacted and diseased reproductive tract. I've seen this on several home necropsies, along with other issues, like tumors and ascites. 
-for those thinking about doing home necropsies, search my blog archives. I have several entries about it. http://www.hencam.com/henblog/archives/

Thank you so much I totally didn't know what this was and she did have lice terribly. My other birds don't. But I treated the house Nd boxes all the same