My chicks have pasty butt and are not eating much.

You need to clean their little bottoms off, do so gently by using a  warm wet paper towel, try not to pull it off as their skin is delicate and you could rip it or damage them. Once you get it off, dry them off well and keep them warm. Put a little ground corn meal in their food, that will help prevent pasty butt. Every time you give them new feed, put a small handful into the feeder and shake it up well.

 

You may want to go to TSC and see if they have eletrolyte powder to mix a little up in their water to give them a boost. Worse case if you can't get that, some sugar water would give them a boost too and extra calories.

 

As for their food, get some baby chick crumbles, the 16wk old stuff may be too much on their little systems. I always give my new chicks the medicated crumbles and they do very well, right now I have 9 four week old Ameraucana babies and they are doing very well on what I described above, with the exception that one is a runt, but even she is viable and hopping around.

 

Good luck.

Edited by CariLynn - 4/17/12 at 1:01pm

Check this  post out. http://www.backyardchickens.com/t/650536/how-i-cleaned-pasted-vents-easy-technique-low-stress

Believe it or not, Pasty Butt is a symptom of constipation.  The cure is molasses in their drinking water. Molasses is a natural laxative for fowl. Mix it like weak tea and give it to them for 1 day. Naturally you should clean their little butts with a warm damp cloth before you start the treatment. What happens is that there is a blockage.  Then, only the white liquid, which is urine, can get past it. This white liquid runs out the vent, unlike feces that literally shoots out, and builds up on feathers and/or skin, even to the point that it sometimes blocks the vent. Not pleasant. This treatment is for adult birds as well as chicks.......Pop

Great info, I wish I had known this before we lost a chick to it.  I could tell he was "bound up" but ACV did nothing for him. 

I would definitely switch to chick starter crumbles right away. It's easier to digest and has the appropriate nutrition for chicks, not layers- which has too much calcium. The extra mineral content could be too much in general for them.

You could add some roughage to their diet, but if you do, you have to offer chick sized grit- they sell it at feed stores. Take raw oatmeal (NOT the individual packets. It's got other stuff added). Chop it up in a blender. Then add equal amount of corn meal. Give them little bit of that mixed with grit. When my last batch of chicks pasted up, I gave then this ( as told in a well-known poultry care book) and it helped. I have also noticed that with this current batch of chicks, there is very little poop smell, I'm using blue seal chick starter. Last year I used dumor. Good luck.

I used probiotics(probios) and it worked. I made sure they were clean every time I checked. After cleaning and blow drying I snipped the fluff with scissors. My bantam had pasty butt for two weeks, the longest I've seen on all the chicks. There were a couple others that had it for 2 days, but probios worked very well. I mixed 1/4 tsp in a small bowl of wet mash. You can put it in the waterer too, but you have to wash the waterer daily with soap and water. It makes it slimy inside the waterer. I agree with chick feed, it's so important they get the right nutrients. Giving them feed for older chickens can ruin their kidneys.