Poopy butt with WORMS?

I have a 6 year old Red Star - she is free range and her back end is covered in dark/black poop - which is very unusual for her. I washed off a good deal of the poop and saw small (about 1/8 inch long and smaller) white worms? mixed into what was left on her. SOme of the poop seemed yellowish in color. Her comb is droopy today and I'm not sure if these are worms or maggots. the color of the water after washing her looked as if there could be blood in it, but there is no obvious bloody droppings around.

I appreciate any help
thanks

She has fly strike--those are maggots that will literally eat her alive. Wash her back-end thoroughly with antibacterial soap. Rmove as many maggots as possible--keep at it until you get them all. You will find an injury, or possibly several where the maggots are eating her. You need to flush these thoroughly with regular strength hydrogen peroxide--it will help remove the maggots. You only want to do this once as the hydrogen peroxide will prevent proper healing.

Get some FLYS-OFF or SWAT! from the feed or pet store. These are the same product, one marketed towards dogs, the other towards horses. Spread this ointment in the wound--it will kill any remaining maggots and prevent flies from laying more eggs.

You want her on a strong, broad spectrum antibiotic to ward off infection from the maggots--baytril if you can get it from your vet.

Daily you will need to flush her wound with a povidone-iodine & water mixture (50/50). Ideally keep her inside and away from flies and other pests. Keep the wound open to the air. You want it to heal from the inside outwards--this could take a couple of weeks, depending on how badly she is eaten.

Those are maggots, not worms. You must remove all of the maggots thoroughly by washing her vigorously. You can smother the area in Honey to suffocate them. Then you will need to dry her thoroughly and then treat the area with antibiotic ointment like Neosporin. That was blood because possibly these were screw worm maggots which actually ingest live flesh, not just decayed flesh. Alternately, being older, it's possible she prolapsed for calcium issues (older hens need more) and that the other hens pecked her and flies were drawn to that blood.

If you can, head to TSC and get some screw-worm-wound spray and use that on her vent area. That will kill any more emerging maggots (as they don't all hatch at once) that you don't see until you next check her. It'll also repel more flies.

She must be kept inside for 2 days until her rear end dries over and scabs to prevent more flies from attacking as you likely have screw worms there. Also if you can, please save a few maggots in a pill jar and send to your local extension agent. There's a screw worm eradication program in place and they need this sort of information (where they are or aren't) to be successful.

Keep her up, offer her food and water. She would benefit from vitamins/minerals/electrolytes in her water. Also I'd give her at least one dampened mash made from water (with electrolytes in it if possible), plain yogurt (because I believe a digestive issues started this), and her crumbles. You can add some boiled egg yolk to that as well, mashed.

Also if you can get polyvisol baby vitamins, she could have 3 drops of that in her beak daily for a week as she heals.

Do you feel the poop could have contained egg yolk? The yellow portions? I'd suspect some of the black was actually blood from her rear end. Has she had inconsistent laying lately? Can you please tell us her diet and whether or not she gets oyster shell?

I'm sorry you had to experience maggots. They're jsut awful, but the hen can easily still be saved if you follow the above advice.

I look forward to your reply.

Thank you both so much
after reading your posts I felt I had a fighting chance, I thought they looked like maggots.
I don’t think the outcome is very good
When I got to her, she had a prolapsed oviduct and the maggots were deep inside - impossible to remove by hand and I was afraid of doing more harm then good. No sign of an injury externally
washed her off as best I could, and gave her a spray of blue coat to try and deter any more flies ect..

now what.

I have her caged separately from the others.
she ate a bit since last night (not much). She appears pretty strong - fought me well during the cleaning - but I don’t want to stress her any more.
Any thoughts

That's very frightening when they actually get INside. I did suspect a prolapse as that's pretty common.

Now you just wait for any more hatchlings. You definitelyl could hedge your bets on this one and give penicillin injections if you feel up to it. I would either give injections, or forgo antibiotics all together. Not all antibiotics are correct for this, so you want to use the right type - the 'cillins. Baytril if her life were at risk.

Definitely try to get her to eat, keep her up. Dampening the mash with water, adding some egg, some yogurt (for calcium, vitamin D, good bacteria) are ways to tempt her while giving her beneficial nutrients for healing.

I'd also like to see the issue that caused the initial prolapse fixed so you never have to deal with this again, as I'm sure you don't want to either.

I don't know what your diet for her is, but often hens will prolapse if they have a leathery, soft shelled, or shell-less egg that they're trying to pass. These don't pass as easily as a hard-shelled egg so they push, and when they push they literally push their cloaca out.

Using preparation H on the cloaca can help to get it to stay back in as the active ingredient in PreparationH is a vasoconstrictor which shrinks the tissues. It doesn't seem that's the current problem, correct? She went back in?

Oh her diet, make sure that she's getting 90-95% or more of her diet from completely vitamin fortified laying pellets or crumbles. 20% is the better choice. but 16% will certainly be fine. Not a lot of the diet should be grains as grains are high in phosphorus which will disable calcium from going to egg shells (and eventually make the bird steal the calcium from her bones to make up for too much phos). 5-10% of a normal bird's diet can be treats, healthful and nutritious feed grains. Scratch doesn't fall into the latter category but more into the treat category as it's of cheap grains, designed to get birds to 'scratch' around in their bedding and yard to aerate the bedding and keep interested and moving.

The other two nutrients of interest in calcium absorbtion are of course the phosphorus, but you're more likely to have an overage (too much grains) than a deficiency as birds are mostly cereal eating creatures. Vitamin D can sometimes be deficient. For this reason, and for its beneficial living bacteria (which are the same as those already living inside the hen doing good) I'd give a tablespoon of yogurt daily.

Also all laying hens should be provided free choice oyster shell. I get the ground oyster shell, not pelleted, as it has some 'flour' from the powdered shells in it. If I get a hen who doesn't supplement herself with oyster shell, all other nutrients being good, you can use some of that flour in their grain to get them to take in more calcium.

The average hen needs about 6 parts calcium to 1 part phosphorus. that's called a 6:1 cal/phos ratio. But some hens need as much as 15:1. It would be harmful to the average hen to put that much calcium in a laying pellet formulation, so that's why we give oyster shell (not egg shells). The hens have an instinct for supplementing themselves with it, and oyster shell is already very bioavailable in the form we give.

So I'd watch her. If she at all looks anything other than spunky, I'd give penicillin shots IM for at least five days for possible internal infection. I'd give her yogurt every day, adjust her diet if that was off, and try to get her to eat by using the foodstuff suggested above (particularly damp at least once a day as they love that). Then I'd watch her for four days and see if by then she could be safely returned to the flock. Reevaluate her then and give us a buzz back here on the board if we don't hear from you sooner. I hope we DO hear from you sooner with good updates. That would be good news.

By the way, all of your other laying hens could benefit from the same things I've described above - minus the penicillin of course.

Good luck, and hope to hear from you soon (with good news).

Quote:
I just wanted to add...I had to put down a hen today for this same reason? She was a Buff Orphington, about 5 years. I tried the treatment ideas noted here...but my hen was vomiting, and not responding well What became of you situation? I hope your hen is doing better.

I have a 8 month cochin who has poop on her derriere all the time, and always has had. She seems healthy and happy. She lays eggs, invariably soiled with poop, but otherwise seems healthy. No worms that we have seen. Is she just a slob???

I wanted to post a reply to this because this thread helped us so much last spring.

One of our buff orpingtons had fly strike and following the advice on this thread and others this is how we saved her: after she was asleep soaked her in a bucket of water with bubblebath and cleaned her and clipped her feathers around the wound. cleaned off every maggott we could using qtips and old toothbrush. (this was so gross my husband was retching.) then isolated her and covered the wound with flysoff (bought at petsmart.) We could see the maggots seething under her flesh. luckily she kept eating and drinking even though her wound was quite large. Kept her isolated (in a cage in our laundry room) for a couple of weeks while she healed. She went back to the flock no problem and is now laying again after a good molt.

my #1 advice to anyone is to clean off your chicken's poopy rear end RIGHT AWAY especially in hot weather to avoid this.