Bald butt and swollen below vent.

[egghead@1265]

Whoa! I see these posts are mostly very old, but SCARY! Not sure what we are today and/or how one I am to post my question(s), but our chicken seems to have many of the same issues as those posted here from previous years and I must admit...I am a bit scared and probably lacking assistance if this chicken needs clean up care!

Here is what I posted on a similar post, to the red Butt/ swollen vent issue...

"
I am new to this forum, but as I can't quite figure out if or what we can do to assist our hen, am hoping that someone on here can make some recommendations that may be of assistance to us. We have 7 leghorns that have been raised from chicks and one of them seemed to be bearing down while outside, and straining unusually hard. When I went to check on her and looked more closely, I found she had a very swollen butt/bottom, which is very red and extended! Nothing seemed to be coming out, and I wondered if an egg could be stuck in her, if she had some type of constipation, and/or if she has an infection, or something else? I read on here that some people soak their chickens in a warm bath, which seems like a somewhat obvious remedy if this were a human being...but, ? "

We had bumblefoot in a different chicken and did do the penicillin injections for her, which did seem to help in that case. Not sure if this is the problem with this one(infected as well as swollen?..)

Thank you for any suggestions.

 

[country]

Quote:
Would you post a link to the discussion about this problem in younger chicks? I've had some young chicks with this problem, only the skin isn't red. The abdomen is just swollen, bald, & mushy. They seem to be normal otherwise & are all still alive after several weeks. I haven't tried draining any fluid since I'd like to know what I'm dealing with before doing an invasive procedures. Did the other discussion have an answer?
Thanks, Sheri

 

[MiddleChild]

I really don't think this can be peritonitis per se - several posters have mentioned that it has gone on a long time while the chicken behaves quite normally and also lays eggs. Peritonitis is a pretty dreadful and deadly infection - this just doesn't seem to present that way. With mine, it seemed to retreat for a while and now seems to be coming back. I don't really know what do to - isolating and medicating her may be the only way, but it would be very stressful as well.

 

[egghead@1265]

Our poor hen didn't make it. We tried some of the suggested interventions, bathing, preparation h, sugar...but perhaps too little too late? So sad, the worst part is when we discovered her we knew she must have been very uncomfortable and probably in pain! Little noise or complaining from her though, but still ...the blood and mess- poor chicken! I don't know what caused this, and did see her lay an egg that had a totally soft shell! Not sure what causes this either, maybe someone knows or it is on here somewhere. So much to know!

 

[Cherstin]

I don't have any hens with this problem, but I was just perusing the forum and wanted to chime in on something that I thought of when I was reading this.

Is there any possibility that, whatever is occuring INTERNALLY, happens and causes the swelling, right? So now you've got this swollen sac, but you are all giving antibiotics and clearing up whatever is wrong internally, but now the external area is being aggravated by a seven or eight-pound hen sitting on it all day long, and possibly dragging it around when she walks?

I'm just speculating that maybe the problem never goes away because the lump is constantly getting bumped and layed on and everything from the outside, even though the internal problems might be cleared up.

Either way, I hope you all find answers. I've got 31 in the brooder, so I'm still in the "education" stage, trying to learn all I can before anything crazy happens.

 

[hen-at-home]

Update on my girl: She seems to be doing better. My whole flock is molting so they all look terrible but she isn't limping and is keeping up well with the others. She is more active and the swelling has decreased. I noticed she has a lot of pin feathers coming in on her bald butt which never went completely bald and I assume it's all part of her molt. I have done two things: first I added grapefruit seed extract to their water - first couple weeks at a higher dose than the past week and I added diatamacious (sp?) earth to their pellets (last week) as a couple of them have been dealing with chronic diarrhea with no other symptoms for quite a while so I think they might have worms. Decided to treat the whole flock by treating their pellet feed. I don't think I'll see improvement if it is worms for another week or so.

 

[egghead@1265]

After reading the successive messages and thinking back to how our hen ended up with the enlarged/red bum, I believe it could have occurred because she may have been the chicken who left us the MOST GIGANTIC EGG EVER! While we marveled at its size when we first collected it, and left it in the box for much longer than we typically leave any in the cartons(especially when it is so GIGANTIC that the box/lid won't even come close to closing!...keep in mind, the leghorns we have are not giants! Well, I cannot imagine that this didn't cause her the original damage, in retrospect.

IF this was the case, I don't know that there is a solution to this problem. However, this too, is just a guess. We have, or shall I say had, 8 leghorns laying and don't know who lays which one as they are all leghorns. We do have 2 bantams as well, but it is clear which eggs are theirs! We also have a rooster, a leghorn as well, but he doesn't seem to be the problem at least near as we can tell. The other hens all seem fine for now.

The lost one did not have an egg stuck, as she did lay an egg the day before we lost her. It had a totally soft shell, which is the first we had seen this for many many months.

Thank you for the notes, and hoping between all of us can figure something out at some point.

 

[Shepz3]

This is so crazy, I am comforted to see other people have (unfortunately) experienced this as well, I thought my Stella had some weird rare issue that I could find NO information about. She has that weird swollen area, not as bad as some of those pictures (yikes!) but she also has the added factor of being totally off balance. Maybe she is just adjusting to the weight of the swollen area, but every time I put her down she totally topples forward, face planting it if I don't catch her. Has anyone else experienced this balance problem? Again, I'm glad to see this thread, as I was about to cull her. Now I will give her a couple more days and see how it goes.

 

[EmmyGirl]

This is so crazy, I am comforted to see other people have (unfortunately) experienced this as well, I thought my Stella had some weird rare issue that I could find NO information about. She has that weird swollen area, not as bad as some of those pictures (yikes!) but she also has the added factor of being totally off balance. Maybe she is just adjusting to the weight of the swollen area, but every time I put her down she totally topples forward, face planting it if I don't catch her. Has anyone else experienced this balance problem?

Shepz3, my Mathilda is having the same problem right now. I've had her in a cage in the den for the past 2 days and take her out to hand-feed her sitting on my lap. When she tries to walk she topples over until she can get her feet balanced. I think it's muscle atrophy from not walking around for a few days rather than a true balance problem. Is your Stella laying down most of the time? If so, it could just be atrophy.

The other girls were pecking at Mathilda's swollen red behind so I brought her in for a little R&R to figure out what was going on with that--I had no idea how many people are going through this right now, it's crazy. A warm bath and a gentle probe reveals no egg. Mathilda prolapsed about a year and a half ago trying to push out a giant egg (we got it out unbroken) so I'm not sure if its some kind of delayed aftermath due to internal anatomy problems or constipation or ???

Hope Stella gets better. I've been feeding Mathilda olive oil-soaked bread, yogurt and meal worms. She doesn't have much of an appetite for food or water but will go after the mealworms if I float them on water (which I put electrolyte powder in) so at least she's getting protein and water until I can get her to a vet.​

 

[egghead@1265]

Also, I have heard that the other hens don't like the taste of preparation H, so if that is needed to be applied the rest of the flock may not peck then...