[Beano]

One of the chickens had  pushed her bottom out this morning. She layed a smaller that usual egg yesterday and was fine last night. This morning when I let them out she was her usual self and jumped on one of the other chickens to assert her authority. As she did so she passed some poo. Then I noticed that she kept trying to poo and was just pushing it out. It was not red and it was more as if she was constipated and had pushed bowel rather than egg vagina out. She's at least 5 years old and I've noticed that she does tend to strain to poo. We caught her and in the effort she had managed to push it back in. I splashed some cold water on her vent and let her back in. She had something similar about 2 years ago and was fine afterwards. I hope she's ok now because I'm at work. 
My question is:- Am I right in thinking it's constipation? If it is or isn't, what can I do to help her?

[kegs]

What breed of chicken is she because 5 is quite a good age.

If she was mine I'd assume it was a prolapse in which case this sticky has some useful information:

http://chat.allotment-garden.org/index.php?topic=9858.0

If it's breed/age related then hopefully one of the experts will be able to offer further advice, but hopefully she'll be okay from now on and it was just a glitch due to the small egg.

[Beano]

Thanks for the reply Kegs. It's been a while and I've been without a computer but I'm happy to report that she's fine. A few days after that she went broody and is quite happily bullying the other chickens even though she's the smallest. She's a Hz 57 variety. I think there's some silkie in her because of the hairstyle and the fact that there was a few silkies mixed in the flock she came from.
 I've just had two POL cream legbars in the past week (more to worry about) and she's been making threatning shapes and noises at them whenever she's out. She's a funny old biddy.
Thanks again for the reply.