Kerrie Devon
Hatching
- Apr 29, 2017
- 1
- 0
- 4
Hello everyone,
I became a chicken mama ten months ago and like so many of you, I absolutely adore our little flock. We have four Lohmann Browns, which we got at the age of ten weeks and they have been brilliant companions.
However, about two months ago one of them, who is usually the most sociable and curious of the bunch, started looking poorly. She was puffed up, unsociable and kept falling asleep on her feet. She was still eating and drinking (although she was particularly lethargic after a meal) but she definitely wasn't herself. After two days of this she started passing some strange droppings - they looked similar to regular chicken poo but it was as if they had pieces of pistachios in them. They didn't smell strange or seem to cause her any discomfort, and the next day she was her cheerful little self again.
Recently another one of our chickens has acted the same way. She was puffed up, quiet, sluggish and regularly falling asleep on her feet. She stopped laying proper eggs (they were soft instead) and then started to have very watery, runny droppings, so much so that I had to bathe her to get all the muck off her feathers. She seems a bit better today - but only after she's passed the same 'pistachio' poos as the ones I found before.
I have looked at the famous 'Chicken Poo Chart' that often gets suggested by people using this forum and none of the droppings on that chart look like the strange ones our girls have passed.
So, I'm wondering if any of you have ever experienced this or something similar? I've just started a course of Flubenvet in case they have worms, as we haven't treated them for worms before and I wanted to be on the safe side, but now I'm thinking that their poorly behavior and strange droppings are caused by something bad they're eating - I just don't know what!
We feed them layers pellets (soaked in water as they aren't keen on them if they're too hard) mixed with oats, cooked barley or occasionally rice, with some sunflower seeds and various cooked greens and the odd bit of cooked potato or sardines. I sometimes mix in some natural yogurt too. Very occasionally they get a spaghetti 'treat' and most evenings I throw them in a small handful of corn before their daily forage (we religiously walk around the garden and local organic farmer's field with them for about an hour every night so they can have a good peck about, even though they have a very substantial coop.) There is plenty of baked eggshell and oyster shell in their coop too.
I've just started adding apple cider vinegar and garlic to their water as well, as I really cannot stand it when one of them is ill. It makes me feel utterly useless because all I want to do is make them better but without knowing what's wrong it's very difficult to help.
Anyway - to summarize. Puffed up, lethargic, unsociable and sleepy chickens followed by weird pistachio poos, after which they seem to recover. I will add a photograph of one of the weird droppings next to a normal poo so you can all see.
If any of you can shed some light on this I'd be ever so grateful!
Thank you,
Kerrie
I became a chicken mama ten months ago and like so many of you, I absolutely adore our little flock. We have four Lohmann Browns, which we got at the age of ten weeks and they have been brilliant companions.
However, about two months ago one of them, who is usually the most sociable and curious of the bunch, started looking poorly. She was puffed up, unsociable and kept falling asleep on her feet. She was still eating and drinking (although she was particularly lethargic after a meal) but she definitely wasn't herself. After two days of this she started passing some strange droppings - they looked similar to regular chicken poo but it was as if they had pieces of pistachios in them. They didn't smell strange or seem to cause her any discomfort, and the next day she was her cheerful little self again.
Recently another one of our chickens has acted the same way. She was puffed up, quiet, sluggish and regularly falling asleep on her feet. She stopped laying proper eggs (they were soft instead) and then started to have very watery, runny droppings, so much so that I had to bathe her to get all the muck off her feathers. She seems a bit better today - but only after she's passed the same 'pistachio' poos as the ones I found before.
I have looked at the famous 'Chicken Poo Chart' that often gets suggested by people using this forum and none of the droppings on that chart look like the strange ones our girls have passed.
So, I'm wondering if any of you have ever experienced this or something similar? I've just started a course of Flubenvet in case they have worms, as we haven't treated them for worms before and I wanted to be on the safe side, but now I'm thinking that their poorly behavior and strange droppings are caused by something bad they're eating - I just don't know what!
We feed them layers pellets (soaked in water as they aren't keen on them if they're too hard) mixed with oats, cooked barley or occasionally rice, with some sunflower seeds and various cooked greens and the odd bit of cooked potato or sardines. I sometimes mix in some natural yogurt too. Very occasionally they get a spaghetti 'treat' and most evenings I throw them in a small handful of corn before their daily forage (we religiously walk around the garden and local organic farmer's field with them for about an hour every night so they can have a good peck about, even though they have a very substantial coop.) There is plenty of baked eggshell and oyster shell in their coop too.
I've just started adding apple cider vinegar and garlic to their water as well, as I really cannot stand it when one of them is ill. It makes me feel utterly useless because all I want to do is make them better but without knowing what's wrong it's very difficult to help.
Anyway - to summarize. Puffed up, lethargic, unsociable and sleepy chickens followed by weird pistachio poos, after which they seem to recover. I will add a photograph of one of the weird droppings next to a normal poo so you can all see.
If any of you can shed some light on this I'd be ever so grateful!
Thank you,
Kerrie
