Water belly or internal laying or cysts?

[Danielle farmgirl]

I have a chicken I *thought* had water belly; her belly was swollen and featherless, and she hadn't laid in ages. I tried to drain it using a large gauge needle, but felt like I was having to stick her too many times to get fluid— so today I opted to use a (clean! sanitized!) scalpel to make a small X to drain faster and without so many pokes. To my surprise, a lot of solid content came along— what looks to my untrained eye like broken down cyst content. MORE to my surprise…these large pieces showed up.

I did tug lightly to get these out, and am living in fear that I’ve done more harm than good— but this pretty clearly looks like soft shelled eggs, and matched the smaller pieces that were flowing out freely. After quite a lot of massaging and moving and time, her belly is drained and looks good now..but was this internal laying, not water belly? Looking at chicken anatomy, it seems odd I’d find egg-anything in the space I cut to alleviate water belly, but here we are!

She seems much happier and more comfortable now in my laundry room, and I went ahead and started her on some antibiotics in case of infection. I'd have taken her to the vet, but vets in our state aren't seeing chickens due to avian flu, so it's just me and my arsenal of pet meds!


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Could you please explain where and how you did it? I’m thinking I might have the same situation on hand .