Blood arount the vent

[tsuzmir]

Hello everybody, this is my first post here
i have 3 ex batts for past year and a half. one of them had always problems with laying: either the eggs had thin shell, white was watery or she did not lay for long period of time. i saw her today looking like she wanted to lay an egg but couldnt so i went to eggzamine her (sorry bout that) and she had some blood coming out of her vent. i was observing her for a while, she was eating and drinking normally. she just sat in a corner of the garden, nibbling on mixed corn i gave her and after few minutes she laid an egg with completely soft shell plus more blood. after this she went back to normal and she seemed perfectly fine. i inspected her vent and cleaned the feathers and found out that the bleeding must have been internal. any idea what could have caused that and how can i help her?
thanks!

 

[dinosaw]

Hello Tsuzmir and welcome to the forum.

This isn't that uncommon in ex batts, it's most likely that the straining to pass the soft shelled egg has caused her to rupture a blood vessel, alternatively it could be due to a previous egg breaking inside of her and cutting her intestine but in that case you would have seen her passing a fair amount of yolk too. There isn't really anything you can do apart from ensuring that she has as much calcium in her diet as possible so that she produces hard shells, when experiencing soft shells it is best to limit the bird to layers pellets/mash only, no treats or outside foraging and add oyster shell/baked eggshell to the run. If you see her struggling to lay again you can help her to pass the egg by holding her in warm water up to her middle for 10 minutes which helps to relax the muscles and lubricate her vent to about 1-2cm internally with vaseline.

 

[tsuzmir]

...ensuring that she has as much calcium in her diet as possible so that she produces hard shells, when experiencing soft shells it is best to limit the bird to layers pellets/mash only, no treats or outside foraging and add oyster shell/baked eggshell to the run....

thanks for reply. they have oyster shell in a separate containter but dont seem to be bothered to eat it. shoulf i mix it though the pellets?

 

[Marigold]

I don't think that will make much difference. If she doesn't want it in a container, she won't take it in her pellets either. Calcium uptake in older hens is very complex and often, as they get older, they just can't manage to utilise it even if the supply is adequate. Good quality layers pellets will contain plenty of calcium, but if she can't absorb it, she will go on laying softies. Problems with laying towards the end of a hens reproductive life are very common, especially in exbatts who have had every last egg wrung out of them by highly intensive methods of production in their first 18 months of life. Not much you can do about it, I'm sorry to say, except to keep a careful eye on her so that if she develops a prolapse or appears to have difficulty in laying a soft egg, you catch it as early as you can.

 

[dinosaw]

Unfortunately what Marigold says is correct, there does come a point where a hen simply can't process enough calcium no matter how much you throw at them and perhaps your hen has reached that point. I would say though that prior to this point providing a higher ration of calcium can make a difference between having soft shells and not. Our hens have never been too keen on oystershell either but what has proved moderately successful with our ex batts is baking eggs shells, crushing them and then feeding them as if they were a treat, they seem to be more inclined to eat them than oystershell and the number of soft shell eggs they were producing has decreased, the other thing you can do is dose a grape with limestone flour and feed this individually. If you see no improvement and your hen keeps laying soft shells after this then you will have done all you can.

 

[Marigold]

As Dinosaw says, this is largely to do with the age of the hen, and in the case of an exbatt, how many eggs she has already laid out of the store of egg cells she was born with. However, another good way to boost minerals in the diet is Nettex mineral powder, see http://www.ilikechickens.co.uk/supplies-equipment-c94/hygiene-health-c102/tonics-supplements-c130/nettex-poultry-mineral-boost-powder-p847
which contains a range of minerals plus seaweed and probiotics. I've used it as a boost when the hens have been in moult, because this is a time when their mineral supplies are at their lowest after a long summer of heavy laying, and when they're needing help togrow all those lovely new feathers. I make a warm mash of pellets soaked in hot water unti, just crumbly, which they will gobble down, especially on cold winter afternoons, and add the powder to this to make it stick. The powder has a wider range of nutrients than just what they can get from eggshells or oyster shell. I think oyster shell was what people used to use in the days when hens weren't fed on layers pellets but had to find enough calcium from scratching around and eating food which wasn't a complete diet, like layers pellets are today.
Hens do need grit provided, though - sometime this is sold as mixed grit and oyster shell but it's the flint grit which is essential to their digestion as hens don't have teeth.

 

[chickenfan]

I agree with Marigold about the need for a complex mineral mixture and vitamin D to help with calcium and trace mineral absorption. I would also cut out the carbohydrate mixed corn. I've found this alone makes a big difference to shell quality.

 

[chrismahon]

Giving more Calcium alone can actually compound the problem. The key is the Calcium and Phosphorous balance plus the vitamin D aforementioned. Good quality layers pellets only with flint grit and a shot ( one only at 0.5mL per Kg bodyweight) of Cod Liver Oil may do the trick.