Prolapse in Hens

Sometimes there are things that happen with hens that are not very pleasant. One of these happenings can be an occurrence called prolapse.

A few months ago our dog broke his chain and attacked one of our pet hens who was sitting on eggs at the time. Feather was a hand raised family pet, who frequently went broody and more often then not liked to sit on her hoard of secretly laid eggs. He chased her, and it was fortunate at all, that we managed to rescue her from his jaws, before he did any further damage.

She had suffered lacerations to the neck and head area, but with good care she soon seemed to recover. But what we didn't know was that she had been damaged internally. She seemed to be doing quite well and resumed egg laying, however the eggs seemed to be an unusual shape and now and them we could hear her cackling whenever she laid.


One afternoon after helping my Mum I came back down to find poor Feather sitting in a miserable heap with her intestines protruding from her cloaca. There wasn't much we could do for her, and with the kids around it made it even harder to put her out of her misery.  We made her as comfortable as possible, and later that evening I went out to quietly put her down. It was fortunate for me the little hen had passed away which saved me the horrible task of having to destroy her.

A search on the internet about prolapse didn't give me many clues. Fortunately I had been given an old NRM Feeds book about chickens and it described in details the different causes of prolapse in hens. In some cases the hen can be saved, the standard descriptions give advice about how to treat the condition but do not necessarily outline all of the possible causes. In Feather's situation it was due to the stress of being frightened and then attacked by our dog. I would think that his attack has also caused serious internal damage to her ovaries. We very sad to lose our little chicken.

To be honest, with prolapse, the kindest thing to do is to euthanise the bird rather than persist. It's better to save the chicken the suffering than to put her through any trauma. I'm a very realistic person when it comes to animals, even pets at times can end up with incurable conditions.

Postscript: I had forgotten completely that I still had this blog. It's been nearly 4 years since I updated it.!

Roosters - Good or Bad?

Well that's a very good question. That depends on what you want to do with your chickens. Are you keeping hens for eggs and meat or do you want to breed as well.

These are the things you should consider before you look into getting a rooster

• Roosters are territorial and will attack both adults and children alike (I'm talking from experience here)
  
• Roosters don't have set hours for crowing. If there is more than one rooster then they will have crowing competitions. Not good at 3 am in the morning when you want to get some sleep!
• Hens kept for laying will have no peace from a rooster wanting to do his duty. The hens end up ragged and can cease laying.
• More than one rooster can end up with constant fights and badly injured birds if kept together
• If breeding a rooster will be happy if he has at least four hens. The rooster should be in with his hens for a minimum of ten days.
• Don't let the rooster free range outside of his area. Better to give your rooster a nice sized area where he can pick for bugs and grubs and stay healthy rather than being confined in a small cage or run.

My advice is if you're only keeping hens for eggs and for the pot then don't get a rooster. If a hen goes broody then get some fertile eggs instead and put those under the hen to hatch. Saves having the trouble of getting a rooster in especially to get the eggs fertile. If you're breeding make sure the rooster you get has nice bright eyes, comb and wattles. His feathers should be shiny and healthy looking. Wings shouldn't droop and the legs should be clean and free of any parasites and diseases. A rooster with a dull comb, drooping wings and dull feathers should be pointedly avoided. He won't be healthy enough to breed from. Give the rooster clean housing and a nice good sized area where he can roam outside and scratch and pick to his hearts content.

Do chickens get worms?

Do chickens get worms? The answer to that question is yes chickens can and do get worms. Ever wondered why your favourite hen or rooster suddenly gets sick, loses weight then one morning you find them sadly having departed from the world. The answer to that is most likely the cause has been worms. We found that out here on our farm a couple of years ago when my middle daughter Inaya's pet chicken Maggie May suddenly became less than well, hardly eating and the weight on her had dropped off rapidly. Worse still she had the runs. One very sick little Black Astralorp hen was taken to the vets. Sounds crazy, but not just being any old chicken No was not an answer. I wrote a story for the Rural Living titled No Poultry Emotion. One very expensive lesson and I seriously should have known way better having bred birds for years chickens too needed to be wormed. You can get a product called Aviderm from your local vet centre the cost is under $25 and will last a while. Birds should be wormed every three months. A withholding period of ten days is advised before consuming any of the eggs the hens may have laid. Worth the wait to have healthy birds and no deaths from an infestation of worms. I'll putting in resources into the side bar of this blog if there are any queries on these sort of problems.