Poultry Questions Answered - June 2011

Written by Sue Clarke. Provided by New Zealand Lifestyle Block, incorporating Growing Today, magazine June 2011.

Dirty bottom bad?

I have just been given four hens and I have one with a really yucky backside. I have wormed them now twice and also have given them Baycox (an anticoccidial parasiticide). Its pooh was runny to start with but now seems to me to be normal. Could you please let me know what further I could do? It has been like this for four weeks now as far as I know.

Age of bird?: About a year
Breed: Hyline Brown
Sex: Female
Your location: Taranaki
How is your bird housed: Portable chicken coop and free range
What are you feeding it: Pellets from RD1
What symptoms have you noticed: Vent area always dirty and wet
What are your bird's droppings like: Seem normal now, was runny when I got it four weeks before
What is its breathing like: Normal
Have its eating habits changed: Don't think so
Has its condition changed: No
Has its behaviour changed: No
Has its mobility changed: No
What is your normal worming regime?: Just got them so wormed and gave Baycox treatment
Have you administered any other medications recently: Baycox
Have there been any other changes: Not that I know of. Its poo has become 'normal' but it still has a messy wet behind. I have rinsed and tried to clean in warm water but no change.
Nerida Bosson, New Plymouth

Lifestyle Block poultry expert Sue Clarke replies:

Firstly, trim off those yucky feathers with scissors and then see if the back end dries up if the poo is back to normal.

I suspect the 'mess' is either caused by urates and fluid leaking from her kidneys, possibly a long-seated kidney infection, an enteritis-gut inflammation caused by something she has eaten or a bacterial contamination by E. coli or similar.

You could try giving her cider vinegar in her water for a day, and then a two or three day dose of a good active yoghurt mixed in with her feed to try and change the gut pH and get rid of any bad bacteria.

I doubt if it is/was coccidiosis at her age or worms, as they don't usually produce that wet look. If it was worms and they are now gone it could just be a symptom of an irritated bowel which might take some time to recover.

The other possible cause is a prolapse when she lays which has got pecked, or she pecks herself which has set up an irritation around the vent area, that has got infected and makes her pooh a lot.

Trim the feathers right back to stubs - it won't hurt her and she will grow new ones when she moults, and that way anything wet she does expel will stop getting caught up on her feathers. Have a close look at her vent: is it normal and pink or angry-red, or scabby where it might have been pecked?

Seeds for hens

I've got a lot of sunflowers in the garden and I've been reading that outside hulls are pretty difficult to crack if you want to leave the seed intact. I'm wondering if the girls would like the seeds and if so in what state, ie from the flower seed head or soaked with the hull on? I'm also unsure about cucumber seeds.
Glenys Bean, Auckland

Sue replies:

I know nothing about sunflower seeds, except my poultry nutrition book says sunflower meal is low in energy and low in lysine. It would depend on how big the seeds are, as I know that can vary in size. I would just leave the heads and let them pick away at them - wild birds like sparrows and finches seem to be able to cope.

Thegizzard does the grinding and crunching, the crop is a storage pouch and the entrance through to the rest of the gut. This is the place which can get blocked when birds swallow large objects whole, usually tangled balls of long fibrous grass like cocksfoot.

Generally, if they can eat whole maize grains they should be able to eat sunflower and cucumber seeds just fine.

Pain levels?

I'd like to know a couple of things please. Firstly, how much pain do hens experience? Secondly, we use a weedeater in the orchard and I'm concerned about the broken pieces of bright blue plastic string that I often see on the ground. I wonder if hens would eat it? I doubt if their digestive systems would cope. Plastic would set up a tumour, wouldn't it?
Glenys Bean, Auckland

Sue replies:

I really cannot answer your question scientifically regarding how much pain a chicken feels. However, like most animals - especially ones that are prey for something else - they are probably quite good at masking their pain. I have seen hens able to walk around with quite horrific wounds from being pecked by each other, ripped open by a rooster's claws or with broken limbs but they have not often shown the misery that humans with the same sort of injury would do.

Re the weedeater, yes, the hens will probably pick at the bits of blue string. I have known hens to eat pop rivets (left on the ground when we were putting together equipment in their pens, and yes, they died). The string would end up in their gizzards and possibly - if there were enough stones in there - they would grind it up and it would fray like weedeater string does when it's in use. It would then probably pass down the gut as a little frayed ball and out the other end.

No, it wouldn't necessarily cause tumours as they probably wouldn't eat enough, nor would it dissolve enough to get into the blood stream.

The only risk I would see was if they ate enough to cause a blockage in the exit from either the crop or the gizzard. Some birds will pick up stuff and drop it again deciding it isn't good, others just gobble up anything!

This article was provided by NZ Lifestyle Block, incorporating Growing Today magazine.
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