This is also known as “prolapsed vent” or “blowout”.

Although we had three chickens, we would only ever get two eggs. Originally, one of the chickens was missing quite a few of her tail feathers and possibly this should have been a sign that something was not quite right.

There were two ways of looking at the problem: either only two were laying or they were taking it in turns and laying two eggs between the three of them.

There were only two days when we got a full house of three eggs and on another time the egg was smeared with blood. About a week later, I noticed that one of the chickens looked as though she had been turned inside out and a blood-red sac was hanging from her. We contacted littlehenrescue  who have an excellent hotline manned by experts offering help and advice. Unfortunately, our prolapse was further complicated by the fact that it contained an egg. They recommended taking the chicken to a vet so that a muscle relaxant could be administered but I forgot to say that I lived in Spain. Luckily, Jess the New Zealand workawayer was with us at the time who had worked with chickens before and had more experience of what to do although she had never had to deal with such a situation before.Again, Internet proved a godsend and we found a video of how to treat the prolapse. Jess removed the egg which came out surprisingly intact. We tried holding the chicken in a bucket of warm, salted water to relax her muscles but that didn’t work so Jess went ahead and removed the egg manually before smearing the prolapse with honey and haemorrhoid cream and holding it back inside for about 5-10 minutes before applying a type of nappy. For a demonstration of the nappy technique, see littlehenrescue.

We put the nappy on and left her in a covered cage until the next day. Two days later she died.