PROLAPSE

It was several weeks ago that I went out to put the flock to bed, only to find my golden sex link, Sienna, waddling with what looked like a long hot dog dangling from her vent.  Upon closer inspection, I realized that it was tissue from inside her vent that was hanging out!  I would say that a good four inches of protruding innards was now outside her body.  But to make it even more strange, the long mass of tissue was being pinched in the center by some kind of egg/fecal matter, which gave the long tissue the appearance of the number eight.

At this point I thought Sienna was on her way out of life on this earth.  Things looked bad, so bad that I asked my neighbor if he would do the "deed" of putting her down.  Since he was just sitting down to dinner with his family (happy eating Reece, hopefully your not eating hot dogs....ewwww) he said he would attend to the hen later.  In the meantime, I researched this problem online and found it to be called a "prolapse."  It was suggested that some honey be poured over it to shrink the tissue back up inside.  But I knew that this fleshy hanging tissue almost four inches long was not going to find its way back up inside the vent! 

I did, however, find a bucket and filled it with warm water.  I could at least clean the protruding tissue off and see what, if anything, I could do for her.  By the time I got back out to the coop, about ten minutes had passed.  By this time, much to my horror, the egg/fecal matter that was acting like a sphincter around the long hanging tissue, had totally clamped down causing the bottom part of the tissue to die.  I rushed to clean her off, as by now the tissue was dirty from being dragged around on the ground.  I gently immersed the prolapse in the water and began cleaning it off.  Then came the second horror.....the bottom clump of tissue, now deprived of blood, fell off!  And the rest of the upper tissue sucked like a vacuum back up inside the vent!  I stood there, a clump of dead tissue the size of a golf ball, resting in my hand, and expected to watch my hen bleed out right in front of me.

I waited and waited.  And waited.  Sienna ruffled her feathers back into place and hopped on up to the highest perch and settled down for the night.  I walked under her, looking for any sign of the horrid tissue that seconds before had been hanging out of her body, and saw nothing but a normal vent and fluffy feathers.  Scratching my head, I went back in the house, convinced that she would be dead by morning.  But by morning, there was Sienna, the first bird up for breakfast.  She ate, scratched around and went about her day as if nothing had happened the night before.  Well, surely when she tries to pass fecal matter or an egg, that missing tissue will have caused something to go a wry.  But nothing ever did.

It's been over two weeks since that horrifying night.  Sienna is showing no signs of illness or obstruction or bleeding.........NOTHING!  Oh, did I mention that I prayed that night to Jesus, to heal her?  I did.  Oh, and did I mention that the King of the universe heals chickens?  He does.  If He cares that much for a backyard chicken....how much more does He care for us.  Be encouraged, my dear friends.....God has your back!  And nothing is too small for the Almighty to tend to.