Omlet cube and run

[MaryKate]

Hi - sorry if this is a long post with lots of questions, but I cannot get any definitive information anywhere on this.

I've searched the forum - but can't find precise descriptions of the symptoms (I'm afraid I like certainty - I think it's a control thing I have!!).

One of my two girls laid a couple of lashes over 2 days and then became quite unwell - she was lethargic, didn't want to eat but did drink a lot of water. Normally she is the chatty one, but she seemed to have lost her voice and sort of 'mewed' - it sounded rather pathetic. I thought she might have been suffering from a stress reaction to a neighbour's very smoky bonfire and she had also gotten herself stuck in some shrubbery on the same day (believe me - she just could not get herself out of this hedge because it meant walking backwards!)

Then on the third day (weekend) she had white diarrohoea and was still not eating so I started giving her bokashi bran and probiotic yogurt and also started worming her again (they had both been Flubenvetted a month earlier). She didn't seem to have a swollen abdomen or be particularly hot.

Within two days her poos had become solid again, her appetite increased (she is now eating voraciously again) and chatting away. However - she has not laid any eggs in a week? Does this sound like the dreaded sterile peritonitis? So many chook conditions seem to have similar symptoms. If it was peritonitis - I gather they can pick up but then become ill again - is this so? And if so, willl she ever lay again?

Any comments would be helpful - about peritonitis (not about my need for certainty and control!)

[Ain't Nobody Here]

In my (recent!) experience, if she has peritonitis, her undercarriage would feel very swollen and hot. She would be walking like John Wayne too.

[Millie-Annie]

That is my experience too. Hot, swollen undercarriage and the waddle. Green runny pooh and dirty knickers (as I call the feathers around their back end)

[MaryKate]

Thanks to your both for your replies - I did check whether her abdomen felt hot and swollen when she seemed really unwell but I can't really be sure it felt any different from her normal temperature. Maybe I would have noticed a difference if it was substantially higher because of peritonitis. She seems to be back to her very chatty self now and eating well but definitely no longer laying - which does seem strange for a 8 or 9 month chook. She has been going into her Eglu and sitting on the nest - but no big event of an egg at the end of it all! I have felt to see if she might be egg bound, but doesn't seem to be. I guess I just wait and see what happens - at least she doesn't seem unwell and it's nice to have her chattering away to me whenever I garden.