Digestive disorder

chrismahon

chrismahon

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Daffodil, with the swollen feet who is now a house hen, is laying again. Problem is she is losing the weight she put on over the last few weeks very quickly. I think there is a problem with her digestive system and so does she. I put her our on the lawn while I was washing my van and she spent the whole hour eating grass and weeds. I gave her some maggots earlier and within two hours they were back out undigested. She is eating plenty of grit, straight out of the container, but her poos are grainy -like the food pellets as they went in, but with water added.

I would expect it to take a lot longer than two hours for full digestive passage. How long should it take?

She isn't moving about that much because of her feet but wouldn't her gizzard, if full of grit, obstuct the feed to the extent that it got through slower?

We've given her probiotic yoghurt which has had no effect on her poos, Has anyone tried this Beryl's probiotic tonic. Is that actually the problem?
 
I do know that food only stays in the gizzard for approximately 10 to 15 seconds, before being passed through to the intestines. Just a little passes through at a time. It's not much help you knowing that! And I am afraid I can't shed any light on the rest of your post either!
 
Thanks for that snippet anyway Philcott. It sounds as though the problem lies with the intestines which says the bacteria in there aren't doing much digestion. So perhaps the route is Beryl's as the Yoghurt has done nothing much. Or maybe more access to grass ? When we keep the hens in for a week to worm them the first thing they do when let out is eat grass -then they go for a soil bath.
 
Hi Chris, sorry to hear Daffodil is having problems again. I have used the Beryl's and found all the poos were much better after it. None of my hens have access to grass at any time, but I do hang up greens daily for them in the form of broccoli, cabbage or lettuce as a grass substitute. If she's eating a lot of grass then she probably knows best. It's probably a bit like my dogs, when they have an upset tummy they always start eating grass. Hope she's better soon.
 
Thanks Sue, Beryl's will be ordered in the morning. Paint fumes making me tired and I've left the eggs in the shed and they might freeze tonight so have to fetch them. Actually it will be afternoon as I have a leaking toilet supply to fix in the morning. Dilly doesn't like cabbage !
 
Hi Chris,sorry to hear about this.I'm giving mine EM bokashi with feed and never have any problens of this type.Folks in poland during winter months feeding chickens with sauerkraut which is fuul of goodies and prytty sure yours would love it too-even if she do not eat fresh stuff.Mine go absolutly crazy for it.Get this from polish shop or Sainsburys(they have them in jars).I hope she will get better soon:)
 
I'd eat the sauerkraut Tygresek. There wouldn't be any left for the chickens ! We usually have some but it all went a Christmas as we are trying to empty the cupboards.

I've sent an email to Beryls about the dosing based on my experience with Sue's Flubenvet dosing. They are saying add 10mL of water to a 6 bird sachet and give each bird 1 mL, which leaves half left over ?
 
Chris, couldn't you just give the rest to other birds? I just made mine up and mixed it with the feed. It there a reason why you can't do it this way?
 
Hi Sue. The instructions are clearly wrong but I need to know how wrong. Don't wan'tr to treat all in that coop so it will be direct down the throat for all of them as they are easily handled and bribed with a grape. We have 6 birds that need treating anyway -Isabella now has a sour crop! Interestingly she came over to tell me she was ill. She normally stays well away as she is quite timid. But while I was cleaning out a coop she walked over and stood next to me looking very sorry for herself. She let me pick her up without any stuggle. She is now in the front room. In the meantime Dilly wants to lay and has decided the front room is no longer private, especially as Bottom is all over Issy who is one of his girls we bought for him when we found out 'she' was a he.
 
I hope Dilly isn't going to be jealous of one of Bottom's 'wives' moving in!!!!
 
Hi Chris, I tried Beryls last month to try and help the skinny hen. I mixed it up as they described gave them 1ml each and gave the rest to the neighbours! Not sure if they got the right dosage so will be interested to hear what Beryls tell you.

I don't think it helped by the way but you are 'meant' to give it evey month and at £6-£7 a pop I can't do that! They are all on small amounts of probiotic yoghurt each day and have oregostim in their water but I'm still not seeing any improvement. I think judging by the number of poos I see that seem undigested more than one of them are having a problem.

Their overnight poos are fine - fully digested but during the day the poos are definitely more 'fibrous', they have lots of greens and although that doesn't give them the runs you can see the colour of the droppings change accordingly.

Have got the skinny girl booked in at the vet on Friday afternoon. I've tried everything I can think of and have waited weeks to see an improvement and don't want to get to the point where I'm beating myself up because I left it too late.

Not looking forward to the vet trip, I'm not 100% convinced they are as chicken friendly as they think and Eb is still very fiesty so opening up that box in the exam room will be interesting!
 
Hi Cuwiar, Beryl's got back to me today. They have built a big margin of error into their dosing instructions because some people struggle to measure. You can't give too much but you can give too little. So effectively the 6 bird sachet when mixed as instructed will do 10 birds at 1.0mL, which is sufficient dose, and the 12 bird sachet will do 15. When divided into 6 the dose is 1.67mL each actually they said. So I don't need a 12 bird to do 7, I just need a 6.

And Dilly is driving me nuts! I want to lay, no I don't, yes I do, no I don't -hay from the nest box all over the dining room. Two days she's procrastinated and finally it arrived. A perfect lovely big brown egg like she laid when we first got her !
 
Big Sue.

Since I left Dilly in the front garden for over an hour to eat grass and weeds her digestive system seems to have slowed down considerably. Stuff is comimg out better digested now. So I think perhaps all chickens need grass if only to get the most out of their feed intake. So free ranging for a bit could perhaps save a lot of feed money.
 
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