okay So I've been sick the last couple of days and caught up on some reading... I read something that interested me in regards to egg bound birds...

 

Place the hen near warmth, a radiator or even a fire. But first apply olive oil, with a feather, to the vent. Usually this treatment is suficient and the egg will come away easily, the bird then recovering.

 

Occasionally, however, though very occasionally, the binding is unaffected by this treatment. In that case fill a small basin with boiling water, stretch muslin over the basin and then hold the hen over the rising steam - not for longer than a minute or so at a time. You will allready have oiled the vent and the egg will almost certainly come away and drop on to the muslin.

 

It was in an old book but I got the impression from the book that the author didn't really see it as a major problem... Infact he also wrote:

 

There is no need to be unduly worried, however, for almost always a cure can be effected quite swiftly.

 

So I guess what I want to know, has anyone ever tried these techniques? Do they work? What do you do, if anything, before taking an egg bound hen to the vet?

What always works for me ...if the hen is found early enough before she has gotten very ill ( that never happens here...I always find them quickly ) ............first thing is into the hospital cage with warm lamp. Secondly a drop of calcivet to the beak. They pass the egg within half a day or overnight...always. No oil.

Hiya

 

My girl was egg bound and I didn't know what to do - so I took her to the local vet - to start with they told me she wasn't egg bound but after poking and prodding her they agreed she was in fact egg bound. They then forced the egg out which caused her to bleed really badly. I didn't think she was going to make it through the night. Someone suggested I contact a local woman called 'the bird lady' she is part of bird wing and the SPCA over here refers most of the injured birds in the Auckland region to her. I discovered that there are very few vets who actually know very much about birds and that the vet who treated my bird did everything wrong and I was very lucky that she didn't bleed to death. The bird lady told me that if it happened again to do the olive oil treatment and then to put the bird on top of a hot water bottle for a short time and that they should deliver the egg easily themselves. She said that my poor girl basically had the equivalent of an episiotomy and forceps delivery! Luckily the last two eggs that she's delivered she has done on her own.

 

So although it may be an old treatment it's still recommended.

I CAN"T BELIEVE THAT A VET SQUEEZED IT OUT .......

Small animal vets :budgiedance:

I personally wouldn't do the direct heat treatment - way too easy to overheat a bird especially if they can't get away! The first thing they do at bird clinics is give a shot of calcium so calcivet would be my recommendation (as well as hospital cage etc). The vets then try to gently push it out. If that fails they try ovocentesis - collapse the egg with a syringe and very gently extract the pieces with forceps, then give drugs so the rest come out over time.

My hen who was egg bound had all of the procedures tried... we did the steam, the olive oil and the calcivet, but to no avail... then we rushed her to a vet who did lubricant and massaging and when that didn't work alone they "induced her" with a needle and massaged it out... was done in five minutes, and aside being a little "stretched" she's doing great and is healthy and well

The Avian vet I went to today - the reasons are on the topic I started was also shocked about how the local vet treated or I should say MIS-treated my baby. He said she is still very tender and swollen around the vent - which isn't at all surprising!!!