Vent gleet and prolapse

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Hi @Cookiemonster1108, this is rather serious, so, a couple of important facts:

1. You have now a rather narrow window of opportunity to help your hen and depending on what you do now, the outcome will be one of the following:
a. Complete cure
b. Partial cure, resulting in a 'leaky bottom'. This means that later on she could get salpingitis or flystrike. Even if treated, they will keep coming back because their cause will remain.
c. Very sad outcome, let's try to prevent it.

2. The link provided above recommends treatment with hydrocortisone cream, but who knows where the blogger got the information. A smart avian vet with decades of experience says that it should be used with extreme caution in avian patients due to immunosuppression. http://www.exoticpetvet.net/

I have a young hen who lays daily and once every few months the poor thing gets a prolapse, five in total to this day. Recovered completely from all of them and back to laying as soon as she is allowed enough light. I keep telling her "Bridget, slow down, I don't need all these eggs", but the only way to stop her is by restricting her light very severely, permanently, which is unthinkable. How are you treating it besides the baths? Supermarket honey doesn't have medicinal properties. If you are interested in how I cured Bridget https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/advice-wanted-prolapsed-vent-follow-up-treatment.1301970/
 
Funny I just noticed this problem in one of my Buff Orphingtons. There are 5 Buffs and when I went to catch her, all 14 birds were running around and now, despite sitting and observing them for 20 minutes, I can't figure out which Buff it was. Definitely one of them has clear-ish mucus and a red looking vent opening and closing. :barnieDrives me nuts!
 
The purpose of using honey in a prolapse is to keep it moist and to allow for swelling to reduce by osmosis due to the hypertonic nature of the honey. You also may use half sugar and half water made into syrup.
 
Which article, the one where I compare all the figure skaters to see who can land their triple axels, or the one with 'the method or recipe'. Here is the 'recipe' if you missed it. Worked great on Bridget's prolapse #4 and #5.

Bridget the hen has been plagued by serial prolapses, on average every few months. Her fourth one happened one Thursday afternoon and I applied unrefined coconut oil, which had cured the first three. But I had a bad feeling because a good portion was hanging out, almost halfway to the floor. She was straining every ten, fifteen minutes trying but not being able to poop. Friday, almost 24 hrs later, surprisingly there was absolutely no improvement, the coconut oil had done nothing this time. Bridget is very strong for a chicken and I was holding her gently as I was looking at her, so when she decided to take me by surprise and jump out of my arms I couldn't catch her. She landed hurting her prolapse and started to bleed. I was feeling like crap so decided to go for a walk. Not far from home, the branch of a tree came into my line of vision. It still had a few dry leaves clinging to it in the dead of winter. Going back a little bit, all these close calls with the prolapses had motivated me to play a little with google, so this is how I was aware of a little something (maybe cockatiel) who had been treated with white oak bark powder and had recovered. Being prejudiced against herbal remedies I discarded the idea. This tree though...was for sure an oak, because oaks are the only ones that still keep a few leaves on until spring. It also had a whitish, light grey bark, while the other trees had dark grey barks. So this was actually a white oak. Right, this is worth a try, so I went back home and returned with a knife and cut a little piece, not too much because trees can get sick really easily. Did a new search, this time about how the bark should be prepared. Gentle heating concentrates healing volatile oils in the bark but destroys the volatile oils once the bark has been powdered. Very well then. With the stove on medium low I held the bark in my hand above the burner, thinking that if my fingers can tolerate it, then it's gentle enough. I made sure that the bark is exposed to the heat on both sides, and... the kitchen filled with an unbelievable aroma, spicy and very pleasant. I broke the bark into coffee bean sized pieces and cleaned the coffee grinder really well with a slightly dampened paper towel, making sure that no traces of coffee remain. Ground up the bark as finely as possible, melted some coconut oil in a big spoon and waited for it to cool to body temperature, because, remember, the powder should not be heated. Made a slurry with as high a proportion of powder as
possible combined with enough coconut oil to keep it fluid. Because, unlike the first three times when it had cured, this time the coconut oil had dropped the ball and was demoted to second violin. This time I had a helper holding Bridget securely and I started to gently dab the (body temperature) concoction on her prolapse. A very good sign: she stopped
struggling immediately and the stuff stuck to her well. This was a grotesque prolapse, practically everything was hanging out, except for intestines and I gently dabbed the stuff making sure to cover very well the prolapse and the skin around it. See you in the morning, Bridget. Saturday morning, a very beautiful sight greeted me: two enormous, egg-sized poos. The poor thing was finally able to evacuate, after 36 hrs. Half of the prolapse was back in and the color was lighter, not as angry as before. Two more applications of the slurry on Sat morning and Sat evening and poops all day long some of them egg-sized. Sunday morning (very fitting) the prolapse was gone. I kept her in the darkness except for six hrs daily, for a few days to stop the laying so her body could take a break.
Something remarkable - for weeks and weeks after, my coffee retained a pleasant undertone of oak. Very powerful, those volatile oils.
So why did it work? From what I could gather, because of tannin and quercin, very good astringents. (An astringent is a substance which causes biological tissue to contract .) The bark is also antiseptic, there was no infection. All oaks are medicinal and their bark contains tannins and in an emergency any oak will help, if a white oak can't be found.

ETA: At point of origin, the Prep H idea wasn't bad, what is surprising is that no one seemed to notice that it doesn't actually work. Dealing with prolapse is a breeze for anyone willing to grind fresh oak bark.
 
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You're right, I had missed that. This working-hobby farming thing gets hectic and it seems I'm forever in a hurry to go take care of something that I meant to get to earlier except I was distracted by another thing and got sidetracked etc. You get the picture.

Anyway that was an excellent post about Bridget. I had read somewhere about the beneficial effects of white oak. I will keep your information on hand for any future episodes. Are you birds pets then? I noticed you named her. I really try not to name mine because it makes culling and processing time go more smoothly. Some times you just can't help it though. They're all precious. But I do my own processing so...it "gets real".
 
I tried the recipe in my hen today, except I heated the bark in a toaster oven at 150 for about 20 minutes. I will let you know how things turn out. You’ve at least given me some hope. I love your story, it’s like the oak tree, or the oak tree’s creator, was telling you it could help.
 

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