Chickens Recovering. Egg bond? Internal Laying? or False Laying? Or my imagination?

Yesterday Big Red didn't seem comfortable or like she was getting any better and the thought keeps running through my mind that she still hasn't laid an egg. I know this can be caused by stress but at the same time I know she gets egg bound and has "jelly" eggs on a normal basis so I am not sure what to this about her not laying. I keep checking her belly to make sure it is not swollen (internal layer or false layer) but so far she hasn't had any change from what we can tell. It has been at least 4 days that I know of since she laid an egg. She is only 15 months old so this is not a normal egg production rate. Last night we treated her wounds again with a warm compress, iodine, and neosporine. This is the first evening we have used neosporine. I also fed her a raw egg. Which took her a while to finish but I think she liked it. After the treatment last night she seems more comfortable today and seems to have more energy. She even tried to walk out of the dog kennel, slowly, but at least she tried. Yesterday she had no interest in walking out. I have even seen her laying down and relaxing a little bit today which I haven't seen her do but once since she was attacked. She is still not eating her regular food. I am still wondering if the bite mark on her neck has something to do with the fact that she only seems to want to take in liquids. I am glad to see her more comfy.

Mabon is still in high spirits. But I noticed yesterday that she either broke her wound open or has been picking at it. It was oozing some blood when we treated her last night. It wasn't fresh it was clotting but it was still more open than what it had been. We fed her an egg and she thoroughly enjoyed it. It was gone within a minute. We put a warm compress on her and some iodine. We didn't put any neosporine on her since we didn't know we could till after we had but her back in the kennel. She is a hard one to catch so I thought we would wait and do it during tonights treatment. But she seems to be doing great and eating an drinking good.

I finally found our Chicken Health Handbook last night. I have been looking for it since the chickens got attacked. Some how we have looked over it the hundred times we have looked at the book shelf because someone had laid it onto on the books backwards... oops... But I love this book because it ha a good bit of information to use. And alot of information to learn for the health of your chickens.

Last night first things I read about was wound care and even though the exotic vet I spoke with said not to put any kind of antibiotic cream on them the book said I could. I think Big Red is doing better today since her skin isn't all stiff and hard. Plus it has a better protected layer than just iodine. Although the book doesn't tell me to use Iodine I think it is a good precaution so we can keep the wounds as clean as possible. It does however say to clean it out with the hydrogen peroxide and I have not brought myself to do this. I hope it doesn't hurt them in the long run that I haven't. I just feel like this would be really painful or them and they have already gone through so much and I am afraid of putting Big Red into shock. So we have been cleaning it with the compresses and iodine.

Next I was paging through to see exactly how the egg process works and how a chicken begins to lay internally or falsely. Next we to the nutritional info so I could see what would help them recovering and things they might be lacking or getting to much of. I found that our chickens are probably eating to much grit since they are fed a commercial all natural diet. Plus that some of our chickens is in taking to much calcium because we are getting calcium ruff spots of our eggs. So Big Red laying jelly eggs should not be just from a lack of calcium but either from a lack of Vitamin D which helps you absorb calcium or from a lack of something else that helps your body work with calcium.

So my thought is if you have chickens.. even if you have the Internet for information you should definitely The Chicken Health Handbook.

Update: Tonight we took care of the chickens at around 11 pm. Big Red was laying comfortably when we got her out to treat her. After treating her she ate some food from a bowl John was holding for her and even ate some more egg. But after she was done we seen her straining and shaking around her rear end. We didn't we didn't feel any eggs but still 2 hours later she still is standing in her kennel shaking and straining it seems like. Wondering if she is egg bound to were we can't feel it or internally laying. I hope its neither and that its our imaginations. I still think her bottom feels fuller than it should. I also seen that she passed a thick green stool tonight. I think this means she is not eating and is passing bile through her stools. Good thing she ate a little tonight. I hope it helps. Fingers crossed that she will pull through this and start laying normal once she has healed some more.

Mabon got her first treatment of neosporine tonight but her wound looked good already and was not picked open any more.