Worried my quail may be egg bound

ArcticCuddlefish

In the Brooder
Jun 10, 2022
15
20
34
Edit: resolved, seems okay, photos below.

TL;DR big quail lays big weak eggs. Didn't lay yesterday but had one in the chamber. Today the egg is bigger, but still very weak and still inside.

I have a quail who is a hefty girl, easily 20% larger than the rest, and she lays some hefty eggs, but they're always weak. In fact, I actually shared a picture of one of hers recently which had an interesting cracking pattern on it. User @sourland was right - the cracks were incidental to the treatment, and they've all been crackly since. We've been kinda worried about her because they haven't definitively gotten better, and we're working out how we can help with that. The eggs, if we stick them in the fridge to observe, collapse within a day at the weak point, though the membrane is intact. Her Calcium is fine, and we're adjusting protein presently. We think mainly her problem is just being a really big girl with big eggs and a little stressed.

The last egg she laid was two days ago, and it was a weird one. She was in a soak for her feet and when we pulled her out after about 5 minutes she had laid an egg. It came out more like a squid egg, no shell and floppy, but also open at one end and with a white in there but no yolk.

Yesterday we kept an eye on her all afternoon and evening, and she started her egg song at the usual time, but no egg. She sang about 15 minutes off and on, then stopped. Gently feeling, she definitely had an egg, and it was definitely weak and flexing under the lightest touch, but not broken. She also definitely has feelings about the touching, closing her eyes and holding very still, but we're not sure quite what those feelings are and we didn't want to needlessly prod a weak egg inside her. She was otherwise normal, so we didn't do any foot treatment and figured she's just gonna bake this one for two days. Maybe it has the missing yolk, too.

Today no egg again, and same deal with careful palpitations. Still feels like a single egg, still weak and with a gentle flex I'd describe as crackling but not broken. This egg is a mighty one, though, and I worry she's going to run into complications if she can't get it out. It doesn't feel any thicker or more sturdy, but she's also not acting particularly distressed. We've got her in a soak now to see if that helps her relax (our birds really like foot baths) but otherwise we don't have any idea what we can or should do. Her vent looks fine with no shell, yolk, blood, nothing wrong. This hen, lovingly named Jumbo/Jimbo, is about 9 weeks old and she's successfully laid like 14 compromised eggs which get cooked for birds or the cat. She hasn't been around a rooster in like 2 weeks and she's the boss of her roommates, so no injuries despite her healing feet.

Maybe relevant, the two other ladies in with her ARE acting a little distressed, but they had a weird morning. One of the nearby chicks managed a huge leap out of his brooder sometime overnight and fell through the bars into their pen, and they did not appreciate the visitor. He's okay (and the chicks are all in the closed-top pen now) but his toes got roughed up plenty. Jumbo was in a pen right next door and didn't get to peck any toes, which is her favorite pastime, but I'm guessing her calm and their distress is because she wasn't in the cage with them to fight off this mighty week-old chick.
 
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ArcticCuddlefish

In the Brooder
Jun 10, 2022
15
20
34
She got it out! We gave her a full Epsom bath over her vent, which involved a lot of her jumping to break out of the lidded bath - an overturned colander on a large flat-bottomed mixing bowl. Still no egg and the water was cooling, so we put her with her sisters and made a humid/warm setup for the night in a pet carrier in our room where it's quieter and more stable. We got her and did another brief bath, warmed the overnight space, and oiled her vent.
Came to check on her and the bottles half an hour later, and no egg. Then we felt around and.. oh crap. I think it broke. But there's no elaking! She's sure irritated, and her pelvis feels hollow. Recheck the pen - no egg. Okay, more hands on. Back to a bath. I went to grab the soaking bowl from next to the normal pen, and there was a huge black egg in there, and the other girls lay pretty light eggs while jumbos are always dark.

...

wait.

Yep, she had laid it in the 2 or 3 minutes she was in there, but inside their little cardboard passthrough where we hadn't seen it. The other girls had brought it out just in time to spare poor Jumbo a LOT of harassment!

The original egg had no yolk evident and was also a very soft shell with a mucousy white inside between it and the new egg. The inner egg is actually the firmest she's ever laid! The crackling had been the soft outer shell. We took them both apart with our surgery scissors and though the inner shell was still fairly thin, it was stable enough for storage or sitting. One single yoke inside.

The second egg is a normal egg from one of our other normal-large girls. We have a single other big hen namd Floppy Neck, but she lays average eggs.

This is only a little bigger than normal, and the inner egg, top visible in the first picture above the poop, is typical for her. She had about 1/3 of her inner egg shell bluish green, though she's from a farm that didn't report any celadons, so maybe just another quirk of hers.



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