Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent. John 6:29
I went out to collect the eggs one evening. It had been raining all day so I waited until the evening to collect eggs and tend to the chickens so I could get it all done in one trip.
While collecting eggs, I noticed quite a lot of blood in one of the nesting boxes. The box also contained one lone egg without a shell and the egg also had blood on it. This was really alarming.
Blood in a chicken coop is never a good thing. Chickens don't have a lot of blood to start with, so blood loss is serious. Plus, chickens are cannibals. The other chickens will peck at the bloodied injury and cause further damage. If another chicken gets blood on her, the others will peck at the blood and cause injury where none previously existed.
So I picked out the bloodied shavings and put them in my egg basket with the eggs. Then I took some clean shavings and used them to wipe the blood and mucus off the back of the nesting box to get the box cleaned up and free of blood.
I took the eggs in the house, left them on the counter, grabbed a towel and went back out to the coop. When I returned to the coop the chickens were just going to roost so it was easy to locate and catch the one that was bleeding. I saw which one it was quickly. Her butt feathers were saturated with blood and poop. I wrapped the towel around her and removed her from the roosting perch and took her into the house where I could inspect the damage and get her doctored and feeling better.
Once inside, I wrapped the towel around her to better restrain her and then laid her on her side by the bathroom sink so that I could work more easily. I lifted the towel to look at her vent and, sure enough, her vent had prolapsed.
Chickens have a vent (cloaca) that is both their sex organ and their means of removing waste from their bodies. Everything comes out of that one hole. When a hen lays an egg, her vent will temporarily exit her body to gently drop the egg and then, normally, it will recede back inside her where it's supposed to be. When, for whatever reason, the vent doesn't go back inside, it's called a vent prolapse.
It's my understanding that the biggest threat to a vent prolapse is the blood. Since chickens are cannibals, they will peck at a place on another chicken that is bleeding and make the place worse. So an injured chicken needs to be removed immediately and the bleeding problem fixed.
This was my first time dealing with a prolapsed vent so I had no previous experience on what to do about it. I had read about it before, but, as far as first hand experience, I had nothing. I panicked. I quickly Googled what to do about it, found some answers, visited a forum or two and found some others. So I drove out to the store and picked up some gloves (nitrile gloves), petroleum jelly, and Epsom salt.
My wonderful husband kept a close eye on the chicken while I was gone and called me every few minutes to check in and let me know she was okay since he knows how I worry about my chickens. He tried to make sure she stayed down and resting. It didn't work very well, though. When I got back home, she had been all over the bathroom and pooped in several places. I forgave her and my husband for the mess and cleaned it up after I got her settled.
I ran the bathroom sink full of warm water and dissolved some Epsom salt in the water. I sat the chicken in the sink and gently put pressure on her back with my hand so that she would squat in the sink. It must have felt really good because laid there after I took my hand off her back and she kept dozing off to sleep.
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| Falling asleep in her warm bath |
After several minutes of soaking, she became restless so I took her out of the bath, toweled her again, and laid her on her side to clean up her bottom. With gloved hands, I took a washcloth soaked in warm water and very gently wiped at her vent and feathers to clean them as much as I could.
Side Note:
I'll tell you now, I'm going to require a lot of practice in cleaning a chicken if I ever decide to show any of my chickens. Feathers are ridiculous! They are practically impossible to clean. How in the world do you clean poop out of feathers? There's no amount of soaking or scrubbing that gets that mess out of feathers. It's insane!
Once I got her feathers and vent cleaned up as best as I could, I sprinkled granulated sugar on her vent. This was a recommendation I got from several people in a forum. The sugar began to shrink the prolapse instantly. I was really surprised that something so simple worked so well! Once the prolapse shrank down some, I used petroleum jelly and gently pushed the bulge back inside her body.
The first time I tried, I don't think I pushed it in far enough because it came right back out. I repeated and pushed it a little further inside the second time and then let her sit for a minute so I could watch and make sure it was going to stay put. It worked. I celebrated! She was going to be okay!!
I, then, put her in a cardboard box lined with pine shavings. I put the box inside a dog kennel and gave her a chick drinker filled with water. Then I took a dark colored comforter and draped it over the kennel to keep her in the dark.
From what I read, she needed water to keep her hydrated, but not much food. This would allow her vent to rest and heal. She also needed to be in the dark to keep her from laying an egg, which could keep her from healing.
Every time I went to check on her, her vent had prolapsed again. After 3 days of repeating the same process of soaking her in Epsom salt, putting sugar on her, and replacing her vent, I was frustrated and looking for other solutions. I read that hemorrhoid cream worked well, so I tried that. Still no improvement.
I read that sometimes the vent would go back into place on it's own. I guess once the swelling of the vent resolves itself, the vent just goes back where it's supposed to be. I decided to give that a try. She wasn't very happy with me when I had to towel her and push her vent in place a zillion times a day, so what could it hurt if I left it alone to see if it would repair itself? One week after she had originally prolapsed, her vent went back into place all on it's own and she was able to go back into the coop with her flock.
I kept a close eye on her to make sure she doesn't prolapse again. It is very common for a chicken to prolapse again after it has happened the first time. The good news, I thought, was that if it did happen again, at least I now have experience and I know what to do about it.
Once she returned to the coop, she never did lay another egg. I continued to check on her frequently to make sure she wasn't having any issues again from her vent.
Unfortunately, last week, when I went out to collect eggs, I found her deceased, laying in the floor in front of the nesting boxes. There was blood again in the nesting box and her vent, though not completely prolapsed, looked pretty bad. I'm assuming she must have gotten egg bound. Her body just wasn't able to pass the egg that would've been her first egg since her prolapse.
She wasn't very old at all. I acquired her in September 2018 and she was probably about 4 weeks old then.
She was given a proper burial.
Though this chickens prolapse story didn't end well, I hope this post will help someone else have a happier ending with their own vent prolapse experience.
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