New Member New Chickens Help!

A

Anonymous

Guest
Hi

I have recently aquired my first chickens 4 in all. I got them wed last week 10/06/09 we kept them quiet for the first few days confined to the ark let them free range in the garden at the weekend. All chickens were not pooing properly at first, but seem to have righted them selves, all except one who is still doing really runny poos. We now have quite a dirty bum which was white and pristine before, she seems lively enough but the book says if there is a dirty bum we should go to the vet. Any ideas before I go to the expense and put her through more stress. I am feeding layers pellets in the morning with the kids giving copious amounts of mixed corn and grain as treats plus whatever they are gleaning from the garden (weeds, grass, slugs and bugs)

Thanks

Ali Warburton
 
Tim

Tim

Administrator
Messages
2,127
Location
Herefordshire, UK.
Hi Ali,

Hmm a little difficult to say since you've only had them for a little while IMHO. Some of my more feathered girls have dirty bums from time to time and I clean / trim them. A change in house / diet may cause the runs.

Corn should be a treat only - a handful per chicken each day. Wheat has only 10% protein content which is insufficient for the hens to produce eggs from (see feeding chickens article). I know it's difficult to stop the children - I have two children and often find too much corn in the chicken runs when I get home :oops:

Personally, I would wait a little longer before going to the vet. It depends on what you call 'runny poo'. It is normal for a dark mustard colour poo to come out once per day - more info on this in the digestive system of chickens article. Basically, undigested food gets fermented and then discharged once a day. If she shows any other signs of illness then I wouldn't hang about, I would get her to the vet. If she seems perky and lively, I would wait.

A 'normal' discharge will be fairly solid but wet. This is because there is urine as well as faeces discharged together from chickens.

Yes, runny poo can be the sign of disease or infection but to be perfectly honest, it's unlikely your vet will know what is wrong and will probably just prescribe a course of antibiotics for secondary infection if there are any other signs. The bad news is many vets don't deal with poultry very often so don't really know any more than we as owners do - there are good poultry vets though - some of these (most of these?) deal with larger scale / commercial poultry farms.

We started a 'poultry vets' list on the main site to help people find good vets that know about chickens, if you do find a good one, please let me know as the list is still quite small!

Tim
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Thanks for the advice, when I got home this afternoon she had done a sterling job at cleaning herself up, I was all prepared to give her a bath and aquired a step by step guide from the web. I am sure neither her or I was going to have much fun so am relieved that I can keep this activity for another day (phew) I will read up on the links you sent. It seems that as with most things there is a great range for normal when it comes to chicken poo!!

Cheers

Ali
 
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