Chicken incontinence?

[Mallownut]

Lovely...
My poor light Sussex (about 40 weeks) is having some issues.
Last week she laid TWO eggs within eggs. They were huge, and the second one must’ve caused some internal damage as she was quite bloody afterwards. She has been separated from the other hens, and I’m bathing her once a day in salty warm water and spraying her vent area with leucillin (when she was bleeding she was pecked by another hen it seems). I can’t see any visible tears. Her vent is protruding a little bit, but it doesn’t seem to have prolapsed.
Her back end is constantly dirty and when I wash her, she always seems to have poo coming out of her vent. She’s started to really smell and the weather means she has lots of flies buzzing around her.
She seems well within herself. Perky, no signs that anything is wrong, eating and drinking normally.
Any advice on the best course of action would be most welcome.

 

[Marigold]

Hi Mallownut and welcome to the forum.
Two eggs within eggs is unusual, to say the least. Sounds as if something might be amiss in the gynae department, but I couldn’t hazard a guess as to what, apart from possibly an infection of some kind. Odd eggs are common in young pullets when first coming into ‘puberty’ but usually settle down by 40 weeks, emerging again when the hen is coming to the end of her lay - the ‘henopause.’ It’s not surprising that she almost prolapsed, in fact she was lucky it wasn’t worse. What you are doing is good - separating her to avoid pecking, trying to keep the area clean and avoiding flies etc as much as possible, but this could become a big issue if they start laying eggs in her vent area. I expect she’s in shade? Any chance of keeping her in a shed or garage or somewhere where you can exclude flies?
I wonder if you have any of the purple antiseptic spray for poultry in your chicken first aid kit? This may help keep the area disinfected and may help deter flies, also when she returns to the flock it may help disguise her vent from pecking by the others.

One more thing - when was she last wormed with Flubenvet? If not within the past 3 months it would be good to give her a course and also the rest of the flock, as worms are always the first things to look for where there appear to be intestinal issues of one sort or another. It may not be due to worms but a worm burden will make anything else more of a drain on her resources.