The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Poultry & Waterfowl => Topic started by: Heather B on September 20, 2014, 08:52:30 am
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Help - anybody know what this is found in the nest box, layer unknown. I have seen a smaller one before but this is massive! :o
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I'm delighted to say that I've never seen anything like it :D It looks to me like a growth of some sort - if you're brave you could slice it in half and see what's inside - but stand well back ;D
Hoping someone who knows about such things can identify it.
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Oh heck couldn't do that - its quite sticky as well. I provide plenty of grit mixed in with the food and separate grit in the run so not sure if it is calcium related - perhaps a constipated hen?! :thinking:
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Oh good lord! I feel I may lose my breakfast!
Never seen anything like that - but I agree that you have to slice it. (Shudder)
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Oh, er, wow!! Perhaps your hen misread the book where it said "Ova" and has laid you an ovarie! :o
How big is it? It definitely needs to be sliced (once your breakfast has settled).
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could be an alien
or it looks like a few yolks binded together.
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I believe it's called a lash egg. It's not actually an egg but part of the chickens inner lining. As I understand it it's caused by a hormonal change, possibly caused by an infection. It may well indicate that she will stop laying soon.
Only advice I can find is try to work out which chicken it came from, keep an extra eye on her general health, if she lays anymore of them and mention it in any future vet appointments.
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Yes, it looks like a lash - a funny beige-ish thing with a strange texture like tofu or some imitation meat product, weird stuff.
The first time I saw one the hen in question was ill afterwards for a few days, then got better again and started laying after a 9 day break (before that and after she laid nearly every day).
I've seen it since but I don't know from which hen and the others were fighting over it and ate it! :o ::)
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I believe it's called a lash egg. It's not actually an egg but part of the chickens inner lining. As I understand it it's caused by a hormonal change, possibly caused by an infection. It may well indicate that she will stop laying soon.
I've always called a shell-less egg a lash egg - where it's squishy like a breast implant but with a normal egg inside, which you can see through the covering thick skin.
HeatherB....you absolutely have to slice it in half, not just because it's yuck to do :innocent: but so we can see the internal structure. Maybe there's someone else you can persuade to slice it?
cross posted with Eve
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Hi there, thanks for all the replies. I'm afraid I threw it away, I could retrieve it from the wheelie bin! On of my marans, Dolly wasn't too well at the beginning of the week. She came out one morning and there was some water/slobber coming from her beak and she excreted water. I confined her for a day and she seemed to recover. I do have a couple of sneezy hens whom I treated with Tylan some time ago which made no difference. They are alright however, in their behaviour. I'll keep an eye out to see what happens but egg laying has been fairly inconsistent all summer.
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Go on then - here it is cut in half - any more clues? >:(
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A lash (the beige bits) but with something extra in it (the white and red bit), so a lash that developed around something else... :thinking:
The few lashes I found were always just the beige bits, you've got a special one :)
Maybe it's an alien after all and you'll make lots of money on it :D You could always put it in the fridge and send it to the RVC on Monday :thinking:
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If that came from a human I would say it looks like an ovary, but I don't know what hen ovaries look like, or why she would pass a whole ovary. I suppose it could have been pedunculated, twisted and then sloughed off, but it doesn't look necrotic.
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Chicken ovaries are nothing like human ones - chicken yolks are not all nicely wrapped up together in a little package to then travel down one by one, the little developing yolks just sit in the body cavity, quite a surprise when you kill and gut a hen for the first time and you see a collection of yolks of all different sizes just sitting inside! :o We had only done cockerels until then :D
Anyway, Heather have a look at this page about halfway down - if this is correct then lashes are created by infections whereby the puss hardens:
http://www.backyardchickens.com/t/460123/hen-just-passed-this/30 (http://http://www.backyardchickens.com/t/460123/hen-just-passed-this/30)
Now I'm intrigued about what it is that might be inside the lashes you found... :thinking: It could have started off as a yolk, of course... I know a vet student, shall I ask him?
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Yes please Eve if you don't mind. I am tempted to get it back out the bin now and ask a local vet/hobby breeder I know. I am concerned that a hen could 'pass an ovary' and still be standing however! That sounds pretty catastrophic to me. Had a look at the backyard chicken site which is interesting and they seem to indicate a 'diseased ovary'. If that's the case I need to know the cure and how to stop it happening? Have I done something wrong? Is there something going wrong somewhere? Its hard when your not quite sure who laid it also. :thinking:
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Well done for slicing it Heather :thumbsup: It's really interesting inside, with all those concentric layers. It's like an agate - except maybe not as pretty. Good idea to show it to your friend.....
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Pretty weird that Heather. It is essentially a 'lash', which is shed oviduct lining. But it appears to have an egg yolk and flesh in it. We have had something similar when one hen shed her entire oviduct system, but ours was a bloody mass on the outside. The flesh areas may be tumours or cysts? She has shed it for a reason, so clearly it wasn't right.
Interesting to see if she lays again? They usually do a month or so after laying a standard lash.
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I've been puzzling over why you all use the term 'lash egg' for this fleshy thing. After searching a bit I've discovered it's a regional usage to call an otherwise normal but shell-less egg a 'lash'. I come from east Anglia originally, a pig and poultry farm (mainly turkeys) so we had all sorts of eggy things going on, including what we called 'lash eggs' and it's East Anglia, specifically the Fens, where the term 'lash' is used in the way I grew up with. Ah, language ::) I've no idea what term was used for the fleshy things - yuck probably ;D
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Heather, I'll send the link on to the vet student, I'll let you know what he thinks. I wish I could do a vet course on just chickens! :)
My hens are all laying so whatever caused it didn't do any long term damage.
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Thanks Eve and all, for your interesting replies. I look forward to hearing what a vet says and yes defo agree a vet course on chickens would be good. I sometimes wonder if we just let them get on with it without worrying too much they would be okay. I'm afraid I'm slightly obsessed and tend to think of them as my children - I like to get home to put them to bed, silly I know. Nobody else in our household looks after our lot like I do and I am prob a little OCD about cleanliness, brushing paths and mucking out and no red mite this year I am pleased to say!
All the girls seem okay and am treating with some inter-vits at mo for a couple of days, hopefully the 'alien' deposit won't appear again!
Thanks all, again :sunshine:
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I think of my hens the same as you do, so naturally you're not obsessed but perfectly normal! ;D