Egg Bound!!

Oh my gosh!!!! I was so scared and was NOT sure if she was egg bound. She just didnt look right, she was looking like she was straining to poop so i quickly checked her vent and there was clear looking fluid and a small bit of a sack showing. This is kinda where i went oh shit what is it??? I have just gotten into chickens this spring and by no mean am i a pro at this!!!! I did how ever buy alot of books and did all my research before i got them but sometimes you have to experience it to no how to handle it.. Me i panic grab the chicken run to the house and fill the sink with warm water and plunk her in it and just stand there.... Now what!!! Wanting to leave her and find a book to look at what to do next but couldn't, I just started to clean her feathers down there and before i new it she gave a push and out came a egg without a shell.. Man was i happy to see that come out and all in one piece. Not to mention she didnt want to get out of the water. Its been so windy and cold here the last few days that i think she liked the warmth. So now is this something that she will always have trouble with?

hopefully not but im not sure if the egg was bound if it didn't have a shell?
Was it a pullet or a hen?
I have had hens lay shelless eggs sometimes, but never seen them have trouble with it, you wouldn't think it would be hard to pass but who knows?

Every time I get this in a hen the hen will eventually die.

mirycreek wrote:hopefully not but im not sure if the egg was bound if it didn't have a shell?
Was it a pullet or a hen?
I have had hens lay shelless eggs sometimes, but never seen them have trouble with it, you wouldn't think it would be hard to pass but who knows?

She is almost seven months old so i guess she is still a pullet. I noticed her egg are very rinkly and rather large. I dont no if that has anything to do with what happened.

JaerhonChanteclerEuskies wrote:Every time I get this in a hen the hen will eventually die.

Really!!! Ohhh no... I will be keeping a close eye on her.

Hmmm. I had a gold laced wyandotte hen, about one year old at that time, that became egg bound. She did not have a bad egg bound thing, but she had the typical penguin-type walk. I placed her in warm water for about 15 minutes and dried her off. She laid the egg eventually, with no prolapse occurring and she was fine. That was about 14 months ago, and she never had any further worries with that. Some birds will be fine with an egg bound happening, and I guess others die. I was a lucky one I guess, but I don't think all egg bound chickens die. Nice to hear that she passed this egg, probably helped for it to have been so soft too. Have a wonderful and great day, CynthiaM.

Close observation of a chicken while she is laying her egg will show that she does indeed 'strain' and push to get that egg out. They have to STAND UP! Hens do not lay down to lay eggs, they stand. Technically it should be called 'standing' an egg. Straining in itself is not an indication of egg bound. It's just an indication of straining.

A bird that becomes physically troubled by not being able to pass an egg, is egg bound. SOmetimes this is a one time event, other times it becomes a pattern and you either cull the bird or she dies of infection from an internally broken egg. But a soft shelled egg is not related to the issue of being egg bound. It is related to the egg assembly line going wonky.

Many hens in my hen house have passed soft shelled jelly eggs and gone on to lay normal eggs for the rest of their lives. But if an egg gets stuck, soft or hard, if it breaks in the hen, the problem is stuckage and breakage. This is equally bad whether the egg is soft or the regular kind.

Not all straining is bad. A certain amount of it is the way an egg is laid! They don't just pop out from gravity.

From what I have gathered , when a hen becomes egg bound it is for a reason and that reson will most likely be an internal infection causing certain areas to swell which in turn reduces the eggs ability to travel down certain paths. I had my first death this year caused from being egg bound but when the autopsy was completed they said that the cause of the egg bound was an internal infection. I promptly put all of the birds on antibiotics and didn't lose any more to that dreaded condition.