Storms and chickens

[hilda-and-evadne]

My four-year-old hen, Europhrosyne, had - and still has - egg peritonitis.  (She never was a good layer but, until recently, laid a brittle shelled egg very occasionally.)  But she made a remarkable - presumably only a remission - recovery after eating some sardines to which I had added a little (half a level teaspoon) slippery elm bark powder, on three days in one week.  Her underside had been as wide and flat as that of a river barge, and I was on the point of culling her, but after eating this sardines+silippery elm bark powder three days in one week, she went back to being her former, natural, size and shape.

I really did find myself watching her sprinting around the garden, at the end of that week, and marvelling that it was the same hen that, the previous week, could only waddle.

It isn't a cure - I have had to repeat the sardines+slippery elm bark powder meal a few times, on noticing that her underside was widening and flattening again - but it has relieved the symptoms and has given her friends in the flock three or four more months of her company, without her quality of life suffering.

I buy the slippery elm bark powder from Indigo Herbs (http://indigo-herbs.co.uk  I don't have any connection with them), usually for my dog (to keep his IBS in check).  I used to buy it from Dorwest until they started substituting marshmallow powder for nearly half the total slippery elm bark powder in the tub.  I know how slippery elm bark powder works to relieve IBS but I don't know why it, in my limited experience (one hen), appears to relieve egg peritonitis.  Perhaps when it gets into the bacteria, it just absorbs some of them.

[Daphne]

Thanks for posting, its always interesting to hear about different possible ways of treating things, even if it turns out to be a temporary remedy!

[hilda-and-evadne]

It was pure chance!  I had prepared the sardines+slippery elm bark powder for my dog but he is a fussy eater and decided he didn't want this, and I didn't want to waste it.  Didn't expect to see such a dramatic effect on Euphrosyne's egg peritonitis.

Putting the slippery elm bark powder in the hens' porridge might work, too.  I am trying that.