First let me apologize to any of you that have sent me an email about chicken doctoring and I haven’t answered it…or even worse, it took me a month to respond. Yikes! I hope all those chickens are doing okay out there. I really am sorry about not getting to your questions.
I’d also like to take this moment to personally apologize to my own flock of chickens. I’ve discovered that I’m a fair weather farmer and I don’t love the chickens nearly as much when the temperature dips below 56 degrees. Which is precisely the reason my husband continues to refuse the purchase of a milk cow for me. He knows I’ll love that cow until the first freeze and then I’ll let it out to pasture, smack it on the butt and say, “See you when the daffodils bloom! Good luck! I’ll be wrapped in a blanket drinking hot coffee inside my house…if you need anything, uhhh, well, GOOD LUCK!”
I make my children feed and water the chickens in the winter. I know, I’m a genius.
Okay, since I’m shirking my duties as the resident Chicken Doctor, I thought I’d let you take over for me. Here’s a question that I never answered from Marla. Can any of you help a chicken? Let’s hear some advice for this poor clucker.
Have you ever had a chicken that was egg-bound? We have a little hen (just hatched last August, started laying in January) that’s been acting weird now for 2 days. She sits down on the floor a lot and doesn’t seem to want to walk around. I looked on-line for being egg-bound, but her symptoms don’t seem to match it 100%. She does this strange thing with her chest…kind of makes me think of when a dog is about to barf…how they kind of heave. I know that sounds weird. She doesn’t have her mouth open, she just keeps making this repetitive motion & it started yesterday. We’ve felt her stomach like the on-line sources say to do, to see if we can feel an egg, but my husband feels nothing. Her rear-end is “flexing”, though, which really makes me wonder.Now, this afternoon, my husband says her comb is bleeding, so obviously the other ones are picking on her. Any ideas???Marla
Need a Chicken Doctor?
Contact 
Time for dinner. No, I kid, I kid.
I’m going to be no help for you here. I’m new to the whole chicken rearing. Ours are only 2 months old.
We’ve had hundreds of chickens and never, ever had one that was “egg bound.” It could be any kind of defect, lungs, etc. If the other chickens are starting their mercy killing, it is doomed unless you remove it.
Real Life on the Farm is realizing that it’s just a chicken and it has the brain the size of a pea and the only nice thing to do is wring it’s neck. Harsh but true. Some animals are just born with one foot in the grave and you can’t stop them from sticking the other in.
We had chickens when I was growing-up. I, however, have no advice. All I could think of is what my parent would do……”Off with her head!” Many a time I had to intervene and plead the case of one of my poor chickens – or chooks in Australia!
http://www.avianweb.com/eggbinding.html
If my husband finds out that chickens have maladies, he’ll never allow me to bring one home. Good thing I have you on call over here
Oh my, this can’t be answered in a couple of sentences. There are a couple of possibilities. First, if the hen IS egg bound, you will be able to see the egg, or at least feel it if you put your finger into the vent. And if you do see or feel it, it’s really fairly simple to get the egg out. First, bring the chicken in the house. Clean off the vent area with warm water, if it’s dirty. Hold the hen for a while with a warm damp towel over the vent. If it’s not a mellow hen, wrap her in a towel with her head out at one end and her rear out at the other. If you have some “personal” lubricant, you can rub that into the skin around the vent. If you don’t, try vaseline, mineral oil, or – in a pinch – vegetable oil. Put the hen in a warm area, a good thing to use is a cardboard box with holes punched in it, somewhere private. If the egg hasn’t come out in 2 hours, then you can try the next step. Use a pair of small nail scissors and perform an episiotomy. Snip about one-quarter inch at the top of the vent. I’ve done this 8 times with bantam show birds and they’ve all recovered nicely.
The thing you do NOT want to do is break the egg inside the hen. If that happens, you’re going to have to fish out all those parts. Yuck.
If you do NOT see or feel an egg and the hen is still straining, it could be an internal egg. What happens is the egg is formed over a 24 hour time period and works its way down the oviduct. When it gets to the end of the trip, instead of being laid, it gets pushed back up the oviduct, out the infundibulum at the top, and ends up down inside the chicken. We had a bantam hen once that had this problem. The good news is that a vet can operate and remove the egg, the hen will recover quickly and probably lay subsequent eggs just fine. The bad news is, if it happened once it can happen again. This is what occurred with our little hen. The really bad news is that surgery costs a lot of money. By the time our hen had her second egg problem, we’d spent $500 on her. So we spent another $300 for a second surgery that also involved having the hen spayed. Yep, you can spay a hen. She lived quite happily for many more years.
If you got the email quite some time ago, the hen is either OK or dead. This is a problem that has to be dealt with quickly, like the same day you first observe the problem. And genetics is not generally the cause. The typical egg bound problem seems to occur in the winter with pullets. It’s like they either don’t get enough water because theirs is frozen over, or they just don’t drink enough. Sometimes an older hen will get egg bound because she’s had a bout with mites and her vent area is all scabbed over.
Whatever the cause, there is often a cure. A lot of folks don’t know that, they just think any sick chicken is a dead chicken. When you raise show birds you tend to seek answers that don’t involve an ax.
Ehhh… not so sure she’s egg bound. Maybe her crop is impacted? Does she smell awful when she opens her mouth?
There are a number of things to try. See:
http://knownbyname.wordpress.com/2008/06/27/speedy-update/
There are a list of some chicken remedies to give a whirl.
I will say, though – I agree with the poster above – sometimes there’s one who just doesn’t ever do so great after a particular point in time. If they’re suffering, well, then – sorry – coming to a definitive end is perhaps the most compassionate thing to do.
I’m thinking impacted crop too. Check backyardchickens.com for help. If by chance it is an internal egg, you will probably need to put her down or spend a ton for vet care. The chance of infection is high and will kill her slowly. I have lost 2 due to internal laying. It’s awful. So sorry.
It’s so nice that all of these people are being so helpful! But… I’m going to go throw up right now and not fix chicken for dinner.
Yep, my chicken is going in the freezer. Beer butt chicken no longer sounds good today.
There is a reason I was a vegetarian for so long. Reconsidering my current state.
Smell her breath-do an episiotomy…..I have always wanted chickens since i was a little girl ( I am in my 50s) and today i changed my mind. Holy cannoli
Please give us an update on this poor chicken!
Well, this certainly puts a cramp in my chicken plans. I am going to have to rethink this whole idea.
I’m not a fan of chickens…and this didn’t help. Bleh
Sounds like she needs Prozac.
I want chickens in the worst way.
I just read these comments.
I am not prepared to put my hand in a chicken’s “vent” (surely a euphemism).
Is it wrong that when “personal lubricant” was suggested that I thought about coconut oil with some nice kosher salt to start the marinating process?
Is it wrong that I am torn between feeling sorry for the poor chicken and homemade chicken soup?
Oh, and giving a chicken an episiotomy? I don’t want chickens anymore.
thanks for that!!!
OMG – do you realize that the BlogHer ad running is the KFC “buckets for the cure” promo with this post?! HIGHLARIOUS!!!!
Thanks so much, April, for posting my question on your blog – now I feel famous if only in a little chicken’s world! haha Well, to give you all an update, the little hen is actually doing fine. The day she started showing problems, we brought her in the house & kept her in a large dog kennel overnight. We did all of the vent-checking mentioned in the other comments and were never able to see or feel anything. So we just babied her overnight, then took her back out to the coop in her own section and kept watching her. We had run out of electrolyes to put in the chicken’s water, so we made sure to get some right away (thinking it might have been a leg problem of sorts) and gave it to the whole flock. Slowly, she started to get better (this was back in March) and she’s still doing well now, even though she doesn’t seem to like to fly all the way up to the roost at night. She prefers to roost on a feed bunk that’s about 2 feet off the ground while the rest of the flock is about 4 1/2 feet off the ground. Her wings seem to be fine, and she goes outside and forrages with the rest of the chickens just like normal. But we still see her sitting down on the ground quite frequently which I still find pretty odd. I’m glad we didn’t butcher her, though, as she’s the sweetest little thing and really likes me to pet her now after her “ordeal”. Thanks to all of you for your comments and suggestions & to April for posting my question!
Marla
My guess is she needs more grit and there is something wrong with her crop. Her comb could be bledding due to cold weather and not other chickens.
This is better than Food, Inc.
Hiya from Canada! I have to say, after reading the post and comments, I am glad we are going for meat chickens only! Even found a halal butcher who will dress them for us! Glad your chicken is feeling better Marla, no one likes to see an animal in distress.
oh my – rinsing, rubbing with oil, and putting somewhere warm (would an oven do?!) sounds more like a recipe than a cure!
I came back today just to read the rest of the comments. I love GreenInOC. Very funny.
OMG – that poor chicken – don’t they have like a hen epidural before you do the episiotomy?
I cannot get “chicken vent” out of my head.
I did a little googling.
“One hole wonder”.
I KNEW it was a euphemism!!
Wanna see?!
Well, I am about to lay an egg laughing so hard! I am sure this is a quandary for you and I am sorry for Ms. Chickie, but some of these comments are uproariously hilarious.
Sounds like chicken soup to me.
Metamucil?
Hi, It sounds like a crop issue. I have chickens (who have never had a problem like this before) but I also have other large birds and one of the things they do to rearrange the contents of the crop is what you describe (that barfing head motion.) They stretch their heads up and bring it in an arc down on one side or the other while pulling into the chest to “massage” or move the stuff in the crop into a different position. We give about a cc of pepto-bismol directly into the crop (use a clean syringe) for these birds when we suspect sour crop and it usually takes care of the problem. I have never done it for a chicken but I am thinking if this ever happens again you could try it.
I had to laugh because I’m a fair weather chicken farmer too, and the job of feeding and watering them in cold weather falls to my kids as well. The problem? I only have one kid left at home now. What’ll I do when he’s flown the coop?
my chicken is suffering from egg bound from 3 days. i couldn’t recognized. she is trying to push but she can’t. she is making different sounds. please help me i tried as above applied Vaseline but egg doesn’t come out. how many days my is going to live.
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The post above me makes absolutely no sense and yet is the epitome of sense… although it leaves much to be desired (grammatically speaking)…wtf?
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