Salpingitis - Warning, Contains Pictures of pus.

[casportpony]

Found a hen that looked like she was trying to lay. A quick exam revealed that she had a mass, but is was not an egg. Very carefully I found the opening to her repro tract and removed this:






Hen is still alive, but I suspect there is more infection, so prognosis is poor.

-Kathy

 

[casportpony]

http://www.thepoultrysite.com/diseaseinfo/134/salpingitis/

Introduction

Salpingitis is an inflammation of the oviduct. It is a complex condition of chickens and ducks associated with various infections including Mycoplasma and bacteria (especially E. coli and occasionally Salmonella spp.). Infection may spread downwards from an infected left abdominal air sac, or may proceed upwards from the cloaca. The oviduct is a hollow tube joining the normally sterile environment of the body cavity with the cloaca, which normally has many millions of potentially pathogenic bacteria. The control of infection in this area is probably achieved by ciliated epithelium that mostly wafts a carpet of mucus towards the cloaca. Anything that damages the epithelium or disturbs normal oviduct motility is likely to increase the likelihood of salpingitis. Systemic viral infections that cause ovarian regression or damage to the oviduct or cloaca, are especially prone to increasing salpingitis.

Signs

• Sporadic loss of lay.
• Death.
• Damaged vents, leaking urates.
• Distended abdomen.
• Some birds may 'lay' a caseous mass of pus (which may be found in a nest or on the egg belt).

Post-mortem lesions

• Slight to marked distension of oviduct with exudate.
• May form a multi-layered caseous cast in oviduct or be amorphous.
• Peritonitis.

Diagnosis

Use the signs to select birds for culling and post-mortem investigation.
Lesions.
Bacteriology of oviduct.


Treatment

Birds with well-developed lesions are unlikely to respond to medication. Use of a suitable antimicrobial may be beneficial for birds in the early stages and if associated with efforts to minimise risk factors.


Prevention

Control any septicaemia earlier in life, use healthy parent flocks, immunise effectively against respiratory viral pathogens common in the area.

 

[Fire Ant Farm]

Wow. Impressive. (It's pretty horrible in humans as well, though more a cause of sterility than death, so I'm not surprised.)

Thank you for sharing - good information to know.

- Ant Farm

 

[Abado]

My pullet (18 week old ) lay this , supposedly lash egg
before she lay the lash egg she was sad and acting sick
She recuperate
yesterday she lay a normal egg
From the lash egg lay to normal egg 10 days
She still on observation

 

[Fire Ant Farm]

Kathy, how is your girl doing?

 

[as110]

Is this contagious? I have a hen that layed a mass twice in a week. I don’t know which one it is so I am planning to use food die to stain the cloaka.

On the list is a damaged vent and leaking urates. What doesnthe damaged vent look like? What about the urates?

I read somewhere that the hen looks like a penguin. I don’t have any that is bottom heavy with head pulled in. But she has black stains around the vent on the feathers. Would that be a sign?

I need to find which hen is sick because there is a broody hen in the coop and if the eggs hatch I don’t want the chicks to get sick.

 

[rebrascora]

@as110
The hen with a soiled butt is certainly your most likely target. Give her a bath to clean her up (soiled vents can attract flies at this time of year and result in fly strike.... probably best to trim away the feathers below the vent and slather on some salve to stop more poop sticking) and feel around the vent and between her legs. Compare with other chickens at roosting time by cupping your hand between their legs. You can usually feel swelling better than seeing it as feathers make any abnormality difficult to see. The soiling of the butt feathers is usually due to the swelling pushing the tissue below the vent out so that the poop no longer falls clear and instead, snags on the feathers.

 

[as110]

@as110
The hen with a soiled butt is certainly your most likely target. Give her a bath to clean her up (soiled vents can attract flies at this time of year and result in fly strike.... probably best to trim away the feathers below the vent and slather on some salve to stop more poop sticking) and feel around the vent and between her legs. Compare with other chickens at roosting time by cupping your hand between their legs. You can usually feel swelling better than seeing it as feathers make any abnormality difficult to see. The soiling of the butt feathers is usually due to the swelling pushing the tissue below the vent out so that the poop no longer falls clear and instead, snags on the feathers.

Thank you for your response. I washed and dried her, dusted for lice just in case, and treated the legs for mites which she has judging from the scaly legs. I cut the feathers around the vent. The skin around it looks a bit redder than everywhere else where she has white/pink skin and there is a white lesion near the umbilicus but it is dry, just a white dry circle. There was some dirt around the oil gland too. I am not sure she is the one with the lash egg, I didn't feel swelling but I felt her bone sticking out, she is kind of skinny. Her vent looked OK pink and moist and nothing weird. She pooped a lot, I didn't see any worms, not sure what to look for there, but I saw her gaping once so I assumed worms and gave her garlic. There is ACV in their water. She looks so much better with fluffed up clean backside and she feels co much better too. Well we will see if she is the one with the salpingitis.

 

[rebrascora]

Gapeworms are pretty uncommon and occasional gaping can be caused by a lot of other more likely things. With gapeworm they will usually also be suffering respiratory distress as the worms live in the trachea. There are many other types of digestive tract worms though and it is important to understand a bit about them and how to treat them....Firstly, garlic may help as a preventative to make it difficult for an infestation to build up but it will not get rid of worms once a chicken has them, nor will DE. Adult round worms live in the gut and can shed thousands of eggs in the poop. The eggs are microscopic, so you cannot see them. Very occasionally you might see an adult roundworm in poop that has perhaps come to the end of it's life cycle. The best thing to do is to send off a faecal sample to have it tested for worm eggs. That gives you an indication of whether you need to give them a medicinal wormer and if so which one. Tape worm segments which contain eggs can be seen in/on poop as tiny rice grain like particles that move, so it is important to keep a check on poop as those will not usually be picked up in a laboratory test. Samples can be sent off in the post for testing and should not be expensive. It costs £10-£15 here in the UK including sampling kit and first class postage and you often get next day results. I'm not sure what you might have available. Most vets can do it but may charge quite a bit more. They don't need to see the chicken to test a sample. If testing a sample is proving difficult to arrange and you haven't used a chemical wormer before then it might be worthwhile to do so. Your girl being scrawny is concerning and could be down to a number of issues, worms being one of them. Have you checked her crop function? Is it emptying properly overnight? Feel it when she goes to roost and again first thing in the morning before she has access to food. It should be full at night and empty in the morning. Salpingitis can build up a mass of infected egg material inside the hen impacting the oviduct until eventually it restricts/blocks the passage of waste though the gut and the bird starts to have crop problems as it gets backed up but if you are not feeling a mass in her abdomen or swelling around her vent then that is unlikely. Cancer/tumour(s) are also quite common in chickens and can cause muscle wastage in the breast. All that said, laying hens will not be plump in the breast like meat birds. They are supposed to be quite lean, so you really need to compare her to a bird of similar breed to be sure that she is actually scrawny.... unless you are used to regularly handling and checking your birds and she feels more bony than usual.