Sticky discharge (?) from button quail hen? What is it?

[Carterborchers]

Speckles went through an egg-binding scare, but turns out her body was severely depleted of calcium and her body stopped laying. After a couple of weeks of supplements and high nutrient food, she began laying again, but per vet’s instructions, I’ve left her eggs with her and after she laid 6 or so, she stopped laying. The last one was 12/26. I’ve been replacing her old eggs with other hens’ eggs that look the same. The vet said she would take a break from laying if she had a good clutch of eggs, and she needed time to re-calcify her weak bones.

Now Speckles has something else going on as of tonight. She lets me handle her, so I hold her for a bit daily and pet her. When I picked her up, her vent and the feathers on her abdomen were matted with some kind of sticky substance. I thought perhaps she’d been bred, and picked up her mate and didn’t see any mess on him. I’ve never seen this on her. I haven’t felt any eggs low in her abdomen, but noticed her mate was making nests for her yesterday and she was sitting in them. No egg though. I put her in a little bowl of warm water and it turned very cloudy/milky almost instantly. Not much of a bad smell, but there was an odor to the water. I dried her off and put her under a heat plate. I washed my hands several times and it was difficult to get the stickiness off of me. She’s drying off now—will check her again in a bit to see if she’s still leaking. I haven’t seen her poop since this, but she did earlier, and it looked normal.

I checked through the wood chips and bedding ,and didn’t see anything, but I’d just changed it a couple of hours prior. Is this possibly an infection like gleet? The last egg she laid had a strong shell.

The only vet in my area who will see her is on holiday until the 10th, and the techs wouldn’t even refill her pain meds for her necrotic toe (meloxicam) from her partner pecking them.

 

[Nabiki]

How is her appetite? It sounds like a bird version of diarrhea?

 

[Carterborchers]

I’m an idiot. I kept checking her, and it never came back. She’s been pooping her normal poos on top of her shoebox. And then I remembered I’ve been putting ointment on her toes and legs for pecking-related injury and necrosis, and she’s also been rolling around in powdered calcium… which is why the water turned milky-looking, and the feathers were sticky. She’s had a clean bum since. I’m hoping it was just that. I was about to take her to the vet today. She’s my favorite little button, and of course all of the weird stuff happens only to her.