The Poultry Keeper

NobbyNobbs

my chickens are around 16-18 weeks old, arrived 5 days ago and now that we're settled and i can get close to them i've noticed a couple of potential problems.
the first one i've tried to research but have got conflicting information on so i thought i'd see if you guys you settle it. my chickens are doing foamy orange poos. from what ive read these are either perfectly normal or a serious intestinal parasite... but i haven't found out how to tell the difference! the chickens seem fine, eating drinking, running about etc. this is a picture of the latest poop -

what worries me slightly is that they're also producing poops that are red and look a bit bloody -

s this normal because theyre still unsettled?

the seconf problem is that one of the chickens beaks appears to be broken. her bottom bit is sticking out and the top bit seems to be cracked down the middle and is much shorter than the bottom. it might be something about the breed?

any advise would be helpful

oooh, and from that bootom photo can anyone tell me if shes going to stay laying soon? i'm impatient

debbie26pet · Joined: 06 Jun 2008 Posts: 121 Location: lancs

bottom pic is she is on the right road to laying soon mine are alot redder, but i think each chicken can be different.
the beak i have 2, and they have no problems, i was told some breeders do this to prevent feather pecking. now my blackrock has grown hers a bit some dont, but as long as she is eating drinking i wouldnt worry, just looks like they are whistling Laughing

the other one i have with the same as beak is very similar in breed and has the beak done the same.
the poos i have the odd one like your first pic, i was told they shed a lining of there stomach, some describe them as a curyy poo and a chicken do these every so often??
the 2nd poo id be interested in what others say, maybe worming them might help, but i might be wrong, hoping someone can help and even ill learn soemthing new Laughing

mags · Joined: 28 Jul 2008 Posts: 2 Location: Ipswich

Our girls do the runny mustard coloured poos some times, did worry at first and like you say, you read all sorts of things that can be wrong, but as long as its not every poo they should be ok. We also get the red bits in their poo, it kind of looked like bits of tomato skin but managed to find something somewhere on the internet that said it was part of their stomach lining which they occasionally shed so stopped worrying about that as well.

NobbyNobbs · Posted: Wed Sep 03, 2008 12:40 am Post subject:

thanks! i'm new to all this so everything that is a bit abnormal is a potential disaster. as i said they seem perfectly happy and healthy so i didn't imagine it was anything too major.

on another note i dont suppose anyone knows how to stop the girls standing outside the door to the house all the time. they spent most of today huddled against whatever door or window was closes to where we were in the house (the back of our house is all windows and doors) it wouldnt be a problem but i opened the back door to find 7(!) poos sitting on the doorstep

Henwife · Joined: 31 Jan 2006 Posts: 3469 Location: Monmouthshire

Beakclipping is done by a lot of the big hatcheries, and usually causes no problems. Not a practice I like, but I can understand that when you have several hundred (or thousand) chicks in a shed, it gives one less problem to worry about.

Autumn · Joined: 27 Jun 2008 Posts: 486 Location: Suffolk

I know how worrying it gets. I'm always so worried in case they have something that I haven't dealt with and made them suffer because of my lack of knowledge! This site is full of wonderful people,who know so much and who'll calm you down and support you! Very Happy

The first poo in trhe pic is quite normal, mine do that quite a bit(well I hope it's normal Laughing

). It can be a lot darker too. The second one I'm not sure of, in fact hens do so many different poos, I've (almost Smile

) stopped worrying!!

Ours gather at the window too, not as much as they did though. I'm sure yours will eventually wander off and happily scratch away. The amount of poo is quite amazing! We only have 2 girls and I scoop the poop sometimes twice a day (to save our kittens from running in it) and we also had to buy a jet washer to get it off the patio slabs.

They're so friendly and great fun with the bonus of gorgeous eggs!

casatinto · Posted: Wed Sep 03, 2008 3:19 pm Post subject:

Hi, i have 4 brown (warrens i think) chickens and their beaks have all been cut the same as yours. Shame, but it doesn't seem to worry them. Mine all poo the same too (not all the time) and mostly its darker brown so i think it may be what they've been eating. They all come onto the veranda and queue up in front of the door looking for treats. It is only 8 metres x 4 metres and i tell them off and shoo them away.

They have a pen bigger than this and a huge garden to free-range in and i tell them that they cannot come onto the veranda as its my space and i have 2 rush mats in front of the door and when they poo on them, they get covered in flies. They are very friendly and come back on almost immediately until Isaac, my black rock cockerel tells them to come off and they go straight away. They are also naughty sometimes climbing in my terracotta plant pots and eating/breaking lumps off my plants but i love them to bits.

jubilee · Joined: 04 Jun 2008 Posts: 125 Location: nottinghamshire

Poo is a great way of telling if your birds are ill but most of the text books which mention it sound all doom and gloom, try not to worry too much about what the poo looks like, there is usually other symptoms which accompany illness along with poo. The top picture is a kind of poo they do when their livers excrete this awful smelly yellowy/orange fluid and is perfectly normal, the red bits in the second picture are indeed the stomach lining which they will shed occationally, again perfectly normal, and worth a mention, white bits are infact not poo, but urinates, (wee) birds don't urinate like mammals, they pass urine with their poo. On hot days, it's also normal for birds to pass alot of watery poo containing white runny stuff, again, urinates, as they drink much more water on hot days, this will pass through the gut alot quicker than food giving the appearence of clear runny poo. Our poo is certainly not always the same colour and consistancy, it all depends on what we've been eating and drinking, so are your birds poos, so most of the time, there's not much to worry about. Hope this helps. xx

El Pollo Diablo · Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2008 3:04 pm Post subject:

I bought two POLs recently from a fairly local place that I had heard was wonderful and so on, and was surprised to find that all the birds there had been beak clipped. Some looked like almost all the top beak was either clipped off or split, but I got them to pick out two for me that had hardly any clipped off, and they have now either grown back or sharpened into a normal shape.

I think this place grows birds up from larger hatcheries, so it looks like a lovely little family farm but isn't really. I was a bit disappointed I must say, but then that's the real world I suppose.