A lash egg is an egg-shaped mass of mostly pus, but it may contain yolk fragments and tissue bits from the hen’s reproductive tract. It is almost always a solid, firm, rubbery mass without a shell coating around it. It may have the shell membrane coating around it or possibly a fragile, thin shell coating.
What is a lash egg?
Occasionally you may come across an abnormal object in your nest box that is neither egg nor dropping. Usually, this is yellow or flesh-coloured and looks at first glance like a lump of sausage meat (see below). Yeuch! This is commonly known as a lash.
Lash eggs result from infection (bacterial or viral) that causes inflammation of a hen’s oviduct. The infection is referred to as Salpingitis.
The hen’s immune system reacts by trying to wall off the infection with waxy cheese-like pus. This pus may or may not contain yolk, albumin (egg white) egg shell, egg membrane, blood or pieces of tissue from the ovarian wall. It usually signals a hormonal change and it is not uncommon to find your hen will go off lay soon after passing one and she may or may not come back into lay.
Lash eggs can take many different forms and you might even find them among the other eggs in the nest box.
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What Does it Mean When a Chicken Lays a Lash Egg?
Ever heard of a lash egg? Odds are you probably haven’t. It can be a one-time occurrence or it can be an uncommon symptom of an illness that is actually the number one killer of laying hens. And it’s a symptom that’s good to know if you’re raising chickens for eggs in case you spot a lash egg in your flock.
At Backyard Poultry magazine, we get reader questions and from time to time and like to share the information we’ve found. The pictures in this post were sent to us by a reader who was wondering about an abnormal mass found in her nesting boxes. She described the mass as about the same size as regular chicken egg, but with a rubbery feel. Her flock consists multiple breeds including Barred Rocks, Golden Laced Wyandottes, Welsummers, Rhode Island Reds and Australorps. When she took the egg inside and cut it in half, it had a lot of layers that could be peeled apart and were about the consistency of cooked yolks. We diagnosed it as a lash egg.
What Causes a Lash Egg?
Although known as a lash egg and having the appearance of an egg, it really isn’t an egg at all. These masses are produced when a hen sheds part of the lining of her oviduct along with pus and other materials. Lash eggs travel through the reproductive system, so they are often egg-shaped. The cause of a lash egg is salpingitis; an inflammation and infection of the oviduct. Salpingitis is caused by a bacterial infection that travels to the oviduct.
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