Has anyone used cannabis infused coconut oil on vent gleet?

First and foremost, cannabis is entirely legal in my state, and it's proved to have many, many medicinal uses far beyond recreational use. It's pain relieving properties surpass any pain salves over the counter as well as prescription. I've discovered this with personal use on serious osteo and rhuematoid arthritis. I've also used it to relieve pain in certain of my older chickens with good success.

I was reading that it may also have anti-fungal properties as well. I mixed some dried leaf into their morning ration of fermented feed, and I will be using it directly in and around the affected hens' vents. I'm charting new territory here unless I hear from others who've tried this treatment with positive results. Or negative results, as the case may be.

Please respond!

I thought coconut oil had anti fungal properties itself? How will you tell which is helping?

Good point. I have only given them cannabis in their food. I'll hold off on the cannabis/coconut oil for a bit to see what the cannabis alone does.

I'm hoping someone else in this vast community has tried this treatment and can tell us how it worked out.

Meanwhile, my lab experiment has been launched.

Well if you have more than one hen with the condition, treat half with just coconut oil and the other half with the infused oil and compare results. If you really want to be scientific, you would also have an untreated group but that would probably be undesirable in terms of chicken comfort.

The vent gleet, if that's what it actually is, is present to some degree in most of my chickens. It's not as bad as what you hear and read about the condition, but these hens have chronic runny poop, and it leaves the fluff below their vents, constantly wet with a white discharge.

It's a good idea to try to treat half with infused oil and half with just the coconut oil, but impractical since they're all fed fermented feed all together. There's no practical way to separate them into two groups.

I've been feeding them cannabis mixed into their morning ration of FF, and will keep it up for one week. If there's no sign of improvement, I plan on suspending the cannabis in the feed, and will dose their vents instead with cannabis infused coconut oil for a week.

If there's no improvement, then I'll try dosing the vents with Monistat. If that doesn't work, perhaps it's not vent gleet that's responsible for soiling their butts.

Been binge-reading up on vent gleet. If the Monistat (or the cannabis) doesn't work, it may either be a bacterial infection or the infection may have crawled up higher into either the reproductive tract or the urinary tract. If the infection has ascended, then feeding/treating topically won't resolve the condition even if it is fungal.

If it's bacterial and confined to the cloaca, you can try a saline flush of the cloaca (to remove the gunk) followed by instilling an antiseptic solution such as dilute iodine or chlorhexidine to kill the remaining bacteria. Have to repeat daily...how long depends on how long they've had the condition. If the cloacal walls are too thickened from a chronic infection, they may never be normal.

If it's bacterial and has ascended, it means antibiotics.

Also recommended is acidifying their water. I can't remember if you routinely add ACV or not, but that's one way. Another is citric acid...you can add the powder /tablets but a benefit of adding lemon juice is that you also provide vitamin C. Normal chickens manufacture their own vitamin C, but the production is depressed in stressed adult birds (not in chicks for some reason). Vitamin C is required for proper healing (esp collagen) and immune function.

They also recommended probiotics to out-populate any overgrowths of yeasts and coliform bacteria, but you've got that covered with the FF.

See? I fell down the rabbit hole deep! Even found myself scanning old FDA documents, for goodness sakes!

Jen, I appreciate the research you've done! It's given me something else to try. I'll be washing their rumps today, and I'll follow it up with the saline and the iodine.

By saline, are you referring to Epsom salts or sea salt or regular salt. How do I make the solution?

None of these hens are acting sick, by the way, and most are laying normally.

azygous said:

Jen, I appreciate the research you've done! It's given me something else to try. I'll be washing their rumps today, and I'll follow it up with the saline and the iodine.

By saline, are you referring to Epsom salts or sea salt or regular salt. How do I make the solution?

None of these hens are acting sick, by the way, and most are laying normally.

Click to expand...

I love learning things. I had no idea what vent gleet was, so I started looking it up...then of course I "needed" to know all the current theories on causes, how to treat, whether certain recommended treatments would require a withdrawal period, etc. and so forth. I fall down rabbit holes a lot! And of course once you're bursting with all this knowledge, gotta share the good bits right?

By saline, I'm referring to the 0.9% saline solution that is compatible with living tissues...you know, the stuff found in IV fluids, wound washes, contact lens solution. However, for this use, it doesn't need to be strictly sterile so you can make your own. Here's a link to one recipe I found: http://www.aboutkidshealth.ca/En/He...s/Normal-saline-solution-how-prepare-home.pdf

I would think that egg production would be messed up with a repro infection and an infection of the ureters/kidneys would likely make them feel pretty bad. Hopefully we are just dealing with a cloaca infection, but even if we have an infection of the digestive tract, that is certainly the easiest of the three ascending infections to deal with.

So is 'vent gleet' a general term for a messy, oozing butt....... rather than a specific bacterial, fungal or viral infection??

....and I gotta wonder, do the chooks get a buzz from eating cannabis...or does the medicinal not contain the 'inebriation' compounds?

Vent gleet is the slang term for inflammation of the cloaca (cloacitis). Initiated by some sort of stress...presumably this upsets the normal healthy microflora, which then leads to an overgrowth of something. Most times it seems to be fungal (particularly Candida yeast) but can be bacterial or parasites as well. A viral disease tends to have a more specific name and more symptoms than just cloacitis. Bacterial vent gleet can be contagious via mating.

I have totally been wondering about stoned chickens too. And if any of the THC finds its way into the egg...