How To Remedy a Chicken’s Prolapsed Vent

One of our bantam hens, Bryn, was having some health issues a few weeks ago…

Her vent had prolapsed! For those of you don’t know, a chicken’s vent is where the eggs come from, as well as all the other things expelled from a chicken’s body! So having a prolapsed vent means that all of those things hang outside of the body and the chicken has trouble pooping and laying an egg becomes terrible.

A couple reasons why this can happen…

• Older hens lose muscle tone in this area
• A particularly tough egg can do damage on its way out
• Poor nutrition or lack of proper supplements or diet

A couple things that are important to do if this happens…

• As soon as possible, separate the hen from the others so other hens don’t pick at the red, raw area.
• Try to limit her light since the length of the day makes hens want to begin laying or continue laying.
• Make sure she has access to proper food for healing.

Even if you do the above…

• She might get an infection and die.
• The vent might not retract on its own, which means you’ll need to help her out!

After doing some research, I learned that cleaning her vent area, applying witch hazel, and gently pushing her vent back inside is helpful and might work at getting her back in good health. I tried this 4 times and her vent stayed inside for a few minutes, but then popped back out. She wasn’t showing any signs of infection, was acting like herself, and hadn’t layed any eggs since being in solitary, so I didn’t want to give up her even though my tactics weren’t working!

 

I spoke with my dad and he reminded me about the medicinal magic of the plantago plant, which is great at fighting infection but also great at tightening and causing retraction. We thought it would work!

So this time I:

• Washed her vent area really well with warm water
• Chewed up a couple large plantain (plantago) leaves and spit the juice and the leaf peices around and onto her vent
• Used my smallest finger to gently push her vent back inside her body and hold it there for a little while

We kept her in the solitary cage for a few more days, and saw that in those days her vent continued to look better and had not popped back out again! She was reintroduced to the flock and has been fine ever since!

So if your chicken has a prolapsed vent, we recommend plantago!

.:.