Your chicken probably isn’t egg bound..

[Katanahamon]

I’d like to pass on a wonderful blog post on how to assess your chickens’ health checklist, and an excerpt about the number one cause of death of backyard chickens..



Excerpt:

How To Treat An Egg Bound Chicken​

1. Your chicken is almost certainly not egg-bound- true egg binding is rare
2. When a chicken is egg bound, it is mostly due to poor nutrition such as attempting to feed chickens entirely on table scraps
3. Most cases suspected of egg binding are really egg peritonitis or internal lay

Now dive deeper.​

What Is Egg Binding?​

Egg binding is when an egg gets stuck and a chicken can’t pass it easily. Signs are of repeated efforts to lay, or prolapse of part of the uterus through the vent. It can be nasty and is most often associated with low calcium diets.

What if I said egg binding in chickens almost doesn’t happen? What if most of the internet advice and guide books on how to treat your egg bound chicken are not only wrong and a waste of time, but actually harmful to a sick chook with a completely different problem?

If you have chickens and want to know how to get them to live a long life, or want help choosing chicken breeds, then this is the blog for you. Because the disease that people wrongly think is egg binding is the number one killer of chickens.

Yolk Peritonitis vs Egg Binding​

The REAL disease is egg peritonitis, also called internal lay, when one or many egg yolks are lost into the abdomen. Normally egg yolks are passed from the ovary to the oviduct. However, in egg peritonitis the yolk is either ruptured (we all know how fragile they are) or misses its target. Then it gets infected with E. coli bacteria.

Why does it happen? No one can say for sure, but it may be when birds are spooked, or handled roughly, or laying one egg at the same time as ovulating another. What is important is that it happens mainly to the high-producing breeds.

HyLine or ISA Browns are the commonest point-of-lay pullets sold in Adelaide (one is shown below). They are beautiful animals with unique personalities and become loved like any pets. However, despite the fact that a chicken can live 8 or 9 years (the record is 16!) most HyLine or ISA Browns die of egg peritonitis between two and three years of age.”

(Reminds me of the movies and stories about magic having consequences..here, the magic of breeding chickens that can lay eggs like machines has the consequence of shortening their lives..the candle that is twice as bright burns out twice as fast..)

 

[JacinLarkwell]

How To Treat An Egg Bound Chicken​

1. Your chicken is almost certainly not egg-bound- true egg binding is rare
2. When a chicken is egg bound, it is mostly due to poor nutrition such as attempting to feed chickens entirely on table scraps
3. Most cases suspected of egg binding are really egg peritonitis or internal lay

There are times that eggs are simply too large to lay easily and do block the hen up. I had a hen last year that was bound up for most of a day before she was able to lay a massive egg

 

[Katanahamon]

There are times that eggs are simply too large to lay easily and do block the hen up. I had a hen last year that was bound up for most of a day before she was able to lay a massive egg

Rare. The post doesn’t say it never happens, just that it is extremely rare. A delayed lay isn’t egg bound. Bound is when it cannot be successfully laid by the hen and outside intervention is required.