My egg bound hen - [View all]

So, I have this very old hen, and she was sitting on a nest making odd noises - more a trill or gobbles than a typical cluck. So I watch her a bit, and she gets off the nest and walks around a little. I can see that her vent is dirty and that her abdomen is drooping down. She's also dropping her wings like a rooster does when he's courting. I figure she's egg bound, so I try to catch her to see if I can help. I end up chasing her all over the yard - a little bit walk and stalk, a little bit running. My son finally chased her into the hen house and we caught her.

I turned her upside down and tried a little gentle massage - I know that if you break the shell, that's bad. Nothing much happened, so I set her down and left her alone.

I walked into the hen house about 10 minutes later to check, and there was the biggest damn chicken egg I've ever seen! It's twice as big as the jumbo eggs my big Australorps lay. More like a goose egg than anything else.

The hen is walking around, looking much more like her old self.
I don't know if it was the massage, the running or just luck , but I'm glad she's OK.