A sad day in the family with the passing away of our first hen - she came to the back steps with what appeared to be her intestines and other innards hanging out her back door - there was no sign of dog attack so I am presuming it had something to do with passing an egg? She had once or twice laid eggs without shells in the few years we had her. I would like to know if anyone has any answers/seen this before.

Thanks - and hello to the world from Australia.

-- Gavin Scott (gavin.scott@bdw.com.au), April 23, 2002

Answers

These are what my dad always called a blow out. Sometimes caused from the hen trying to lay a very large egg. Seems to happen more in older hens from what I've seen.

-- Wendy (weiskids@yahoo.com), April 23, 2002.

Yep. Called a prolapse. Seems as if it might be somewhat correlated with the fatness of the birds as well.

Which city are you from? I'm in Bathurst, although I lived in Sydney for over thirty years - still got one son there, plus another in Melbourne. And don't worry - we won't hold it against you that you work in a law office - the forum moderator is a stockbroker, and I'm a public servant, so we're not really in a position to point fingers.

-- Don Armstrong (from Australia) (darmst@yahoo.com.au), April 23, 2002.

Thanks Don - Brisbane actually - (and quite about the law office - I can't be seen to be a hard nosed lawyer if I keep two chickens in my backyard!!)

The hen was very well fed - out of kindness I suppose - I hope that it was not my actions that caused this...

Cheers anyway - have a good ANZAC day tomorrow.

-- Gavin Scott (gavin.scott@bdw.com.au), April 23, 2002.

P.S. you might consider doing what I've done, and getting a free email account you can afford to discard if necessary. As it happens, I'm not doing this from work - I've got time off. There are spam address harvesters that reap addresses from this board (and if anyone decides that makes spamming a valid homestead industry I won't shoot them - I'll personally finance my own ticket and come over and strangle them - over a period of days - between other amusements. I'll bring plenty of friends too - it's getting to the stage where they're beginning to wonder whether contracting the Mafia would be too expensive - they've already got past the point of deciding it would be not only justified, but is necessary, to do something newsworthy and permanent to spammers).

It's probably better not to use your work address or in fact a real home email address (e.g. whatnot@bigpond.com or @tpg.com.au or whatever) or it could start getting bombarded with spam.

-- Don Armstrong (darmst@yahoo.com.au), April 23, 2002.

doesn't that usually happen from weak muscles? i know it happens from trying to lay a really large egg, too, but just another thot.

-- C (punk_chicadee@yahoo.com), April 23, 2002.

Well, what a coincidence. My brother is looking for jobs around there at the moment - you know of any high-powered Information Technology operations or or project or change management positions that may not have made it to the advertisements yet?

My mother came from a small village called Benowa - now better known as Ashmore Village because of the road that runs through it, and part of the Gold Coast. Our property in central western New South Wales is named "Ashmoor" - almost the same, but more in keeping with the Armstrong's Scottish/northern English border heritage. Gives me the best of both worlds when the State of Origin series is on.

There is at least one other poster on this board from Brisbane; and one, I believe, who has moved or is moving from the USA to northern Queensland.

Back to the subject - the shell-less eggs are usual but not common - you can expect those. So, I guess, is the prolapse. There's a LOT of information in the "older messages" which are listed by subject at the bottom of these current posts. While keeping animals well-fed is OK, overweight is not good for anyone (believe me, I know). The correlation I mentioned is only a statistical thing, and also breed or strain related, so you can't say it wouldn't have happened even if you had her as skinny as a battery-reared leghorn. However, it may be an idea to take a lesson from what you've learned - that way her death won't have been in vain. Of course, to be brutal, in your position, for me her death wouldn't have been in vain anyway. Chicken casserole is a valid outcome from chickens.

-- Don Armstrong (darmst@yahoo.com.au), April 23, 2002.

For future reference ~ Many have had success with this treatment:

Prolapse

-- ~Rogo (rogo2222@hotmail.com), April 23, 2002.

As is chicken curry, Don!!! Or, in my Dad's opinion, chicken and dumplings....

-- Tracy (trimmer31@hotmail.com), April 27, 2002.

... ot cacciatore, ot tikka, or whatever. Hovever, turns out she was one third of their backyard pet chickens, so I'll moderate my comments a little. Also, via private correspiondence, turns out Gavin met my uncle (mother's brother [briefly, one New Year's Eve party]), and one of my cousins was in part named after his grandmother, so I'll stop making such hard-nosed comments. Extraordinary how small the world can get sometimes - we've got over twenty million possibilities here in Australia, and my surviving aunt has a picture of the dairy where she milked altogether too many cows, painted by his grandmother, on her wall.

-- Don Armstrong (from Australia) (darmst@yahoo.com.au), April 28, 2002.