Vet is stumped! Why are my hens having so much trouble??

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GumBranchChick

Songster
Nov 29, 2016
194
151
106
Elberta, AL
Okay, this isn't going to be a short post bc I don't know what is & isn't important to share. I'll attach photos below. Have had some egg-laying issues for such a long time that I don't even remember when it started...end of 2017, early 2018 at least. My girls will be 2 years old in mid-November. Never any egg issues before this, except for one RIR that had an only slightly calcified egg rupture when she was 8-9 months old & despite having the vet flush her out & give antibiotics, the next time she tried to lay I came home & found her dead in the nest box. :( Broke my heart! I tell you that so you understand why I'm so paranoid about having rubber eggs.

I have a Barred Rock & an Americauna hen left, and one big, crazy rooster...I have to keep him separated from the girls because he's too overzealous & he cuts them with his nails & spurs...in a matter of hours together.

(I know this is a lot of detail & hard to follow...trust me! I know!!)

When this all started, it was just my Barred Rock laying rubber, or very thin-shelled eggs. And she was starting to get in the habit of eating them, I assumed she was breaking them, but I think the breaking was first & the eating was second. Tums was the only thing that made her eggs hard enough to not break. I got a solar-powered fan for the nest box in case they were too warm in there & she was rushing the process. They have access to oyster shell on the side at all times, they're on layer feed (I tried a few different brands & I switched to pellets & back to crumbles), I tried cutting out all treats, I tried pharmaceutical grade calcium carbonate instead of tums (but the rubber eggs came back!), so I switched her back to tums because I didn't want a repeat of the RIR incident. I gave the equivalent of 500 mg (or less) of tums based on my vet's recommendations. I started giving my Americauna tums-free yogurt separately after a couple weeks because she started having eggs with lines in them, like the egg was getting pulled in two, or very oddly shaped eggs, so I figured okay too much calcium. When I stopped tums for her, the eggs went back to normal...for a few months or so. As summer started to pick up heat, the egg-laying slowed down for both, but I continued the regiment we were on bc when the BR would lay, it would still be rubber or very thin. Then the BR started losing feathers on her crop (eating them I assume bc I never found any of them), eventually all the way down to her belly but she wasn't acting broody. Neither of them have ever tried to sit in the nest box all day just for the heck of it. So I tried supplementing protein. No help! After researching, I figured out they were the right age to start molting, so never having chickens before, I wrote off a lot of symptoms to molting. Then the Americauna started going red to pale & back again. I mean dozens of times a day she would do this. Otherwise she acted totally normal, so I just kept an eye on it. Until one day I thought the BR was a little pale (which was unusual) & the Americauna looked a little sad, so I took them both to the vet. The vet said if the Americauna stayed pale it would make more sense diagnostically, but the back-and-forth didn't make any sense. Listened to her heart & it sounded normal. They couldn't find anything wrong with her. Only 1 parasite egg in the fecal, so we de-wormed just to be safe. And I believe this is when we started her on baytril. On July 22nd. The sequence of vet visits & meds gets mushy in my head, but this is what has happened since then (probably in the course of a month). My dates are based on photos. :)
On July 24th, the Americauna was looking even more pale, more often & one afternoon she was pitiful, standing there with eyes closed, so I checked her over & found that the area below her vent was naked. So back to the vet clinic we go & happen to see a different vet. He said he would recommend that I dust them, having unexplained feather loss that he didn't think was due to molting & maybe a little dry skin or gunk at the base of her feathers. Didn't find any mites in any nest boxes, but I don't really know what I would be looking for. So we did Sevin dust on all chickens & nest boxes because I had it on hand, and the next day she was like a new bird!! But I never found any creepy crawlies on her, so I don't think they were overrun with them. After 10 days, we did a Permethrin spray, that I had just ordered online. So now I think we're all good! Wrong!

On August 4th, the Americauna laid this blue blob (the color of her eggs, dry, squishy, but permanent in shape if that makes sense...not like play-doh squishy) in the nest box next to a rubber egg & a normal BR egg. Probably the last normal egg we got. But she's still eating & acting normal aside from the random pale spells which had become almost normal at this point. On August 6th, she was a little slower than normal & I looked at her after she pooped in the morning & saw something that looked like egg membrane sticking out of her back end. So i pulled it & a piece broke off, but it was definitely a piece of already broken rubber egg. So I take her to the vet & leave her for them to check her out. The vet says possibly infectious bronchitis, mycoplasma, or adenovirus & starts her on doxycycline (& I ordered Denagard online just in case it was mycoplasma & the doxy didn't work). He says hopefully she will poop the rest out. A little weird egg white came out that evening. And two days later I found the rest of that egg membrane I had pulled on, next to a busted egg yolk. By this point, Ive had her back on tums also because I'm worried about calcium in both hens now.

(I told you this would get long!!)

On August 11th (a Saturday morning...of course!!), I find this huge yellow puddle on the floor of their coop. Too dark & too big to be egg yolk. The americauna seems fine, but she's the only one that's had issues so I disregard the fact that the BR is in the nest box. I get home a few hours later & the BR is still in the nest box, hot & uncomfortable looking. Pooping clear watery puddles at this point. Not much of an appetite except for mealworms. And her back end seems a bit warm & swollen (but I'm a terrible judge of that because my hens don't love being touched). So I bring her in a kennel in the house, give her a warm soak (which she tolerated for less than 10 minutes) & contact my vet (I Love my vets!). We decide to start the BR on doxy also, which really helps over the next day or two. I get a weird egg yolk on my bathroom floor on day 2 of doxy. It's the thinnest membrane I've ever seen! And for lack of a better word, there are a couple chunks of meaty/tissue-type stuff that come out with it. Poops start get more normal & her appetite comes back. Great! Bullet dodged! But she's still laying rubber eggs out on the ground or on the ramp, so they're always busted.
Then two days ago (Sunday Aug 19th) I find yet another blue blob next to a busted rubber egg membrane & what looks like egg yolk. And this morning, more egg-yolk yellow liquid on the coop floor where one had been sleeping, but No membrane or shell. I assume it belongs to the Americauna because she's the one that's less active today.

My rooster & my drakes all seem fine, so I don't think it's something infectious or respiratory. Fingers crossed!!
I want to help my girls, but I feel like I've tried everything I can think of & then some. I am having to give them their antibiotics crushed & squished in small pieces of bread, which I know isn't great. But it is the Only way I could get them to take it
.
I have some powdered probiotics, multivitamins, & oregano, etc. that I'm mixing in their water almost every day since they've been on antibiotics. And they are still on doxy...each got 22 days worth. I'm concerned what happens when we run out. I don't think my vet is familiar with the idea of the contraceptive implant (or whatever it is) in chickens, but if that's the way to go to stop laying for now, I assume he would be willing to try it. I'm open to your suggestions & wisdom. I'm trying so hard & I feel like I'm failing them & it's crushing me to not be able to help!

Thanks for reading this & any attempts to help me!! This forum is a godsend!
 
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Well that was a lot to take in and try and sort through. I would of broken my threads into different threads. I got a bit lost to be honest.
Oyster shell should be offered at all times for hens. It’s a slow release of calcium that’s an excellent part of their diets.
Tums is just a quick “shot” of calcium and Tums should not be a daily additive to their diet. It’s only a bandaid to a possibly bigger problem.
Sounds like your hen laid a lash egg....the blue blob you described. For that there’s basically nothing you can do
Photos would be of great help.
Egg yolk presumption that it was a healthy egg and nothing but a little yolk left suggests a egg eater. Completely different topic that’s behavioral not medical.
 
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More photos to come soon
 
This is what I’m thinking you might have a hen with salpingitis.
Heat can also cause laying problems. We need to see the inside of the “blob”

I am thinking along those lines as well.


Also..... Not all oyster shell is created equal.
My birds will only eat pacific pearl brand. It actually LOOKS (and is) like real oyster shells.

Worth a shot.
 

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