My sweet royal palm turkey hen recovered from black head (yes, they can recover from this – I’ll do a separate post) only to get egg bound by her very first egg.
Egg bound birds tend to have a hunched stance and appear to be in major discomfort. Sometimes, while actively pushing, they will look upright – similar to a penguin. But when they are not pushing they often look like this:
When I saw her doing this I put her on a roost so I could check out her backside. This is what I saw (its gross):
Usually when I have an egg bound chicken I give them an Epsom salt bath. I’ve posted about this here. Chanel is too big for my kitchen sink and I didn’t want to put her in the bath tub where I didn’t have the view or leverage to watch progress and assist.
Instead of a bath, this time I opted for oil. I poured vegetable oil into a cup, and since I was out of rubber gloves, I washed my hands well.
Holding Chanel with one hand, I dipped my free hand into the cup of oil and got a generous amount of oil with my fingers. I went to work lubing up her vent and the egg.
With each push I made sure to keep oiling the egg and area. Each time the egg would peek out a little and go back inside, taking some oil with it. I was careful to not put my fingers inside her vent so I wouldn’t accidentally break the egg – especially since I wasn’t sure how thick the shell was. As the oil made its way into her vent it helped ease the egg out a little more with each push until finally it popped out into my hand.
Chanel was immediately relieved but it easily took her a day to recover.
xo
