Bullying, Bathing, Runts, and Handling Hens

[AmberRex]

I guess I'm the sole dissenter about bathing: Maggots LOVE a wet poopy butt. They can eat your bird / rabbit / kitten / alive. As long as they're warm, a pre-soak (can be done with a spray bottle) to soften things up, and then a quick "butt-bath" will keep them maggot free. You might also take a VERY CLOSE look around their vents, and between their vents and breast to see if they have mites, which also contributes to poopy-butt--but it's normally dry, crusted on poop.

Taming: a lawn chair amongst the chickens while you have your tea, coupled with treats sprinkled around your feet, helps for several reasons: FOOD, proximity, and shade and hawk protection while they mill UNDER your chair. You are big, you are giving them treats; they act as though they feel safer. Offering bites of YOUR food will soon have you fending them off in order to get a bite of your own lunch...

Picked-on birds: Make sure they are getting adequate access to food and water. Sometimes the weakest are kept from eating and drinking by the others, as you've seen with the treats. I don't know if giving them special feeding in the sight of the more dominant birds would increase aggression from the dominant ones, or not. Maybe others can weigh in on that.

Careful about keeping low-ranking birds separated from the flock for long (long to chickens can be just an hour or two) because they might be severely trounced when you "reintroduce" them to the flock.

Hope the vent gleet clears up quickly! Good luck!

Hang on a minute. Maggots will only eat dead flesh. Won't they?? This is why even today they are still used in medicine if a patient has been severely injured for example in a fire and is covered in dead skin which is preventing the wound from properly healing. What may happen is that the wet poop, being so acidic will burn the hen's skin and cause her discomfort....

 

[chooks4life]

Quote: Not at all; as far as I understood it, people only warned against washing if unnecessary, or too much washing, but certainly there's times when a chook needs washing. I suppose it'd have a lot to do with what sort of climate you're in and whether or not the poops dry quickly. If you've got a wet mass stuck to their rumps you're obviously inviting trouble.

I've never had anything more than a couple of poops on any bird's butt, it's pretty rare and as long as the disease is taken care of the few poops take care of themselves, but if I had something like vent gleet in my flock I dare say I'd end up washing too. I've had to wash babies before though. By all means, a plastered bird ought to be washed. The issue is when the whole bird is being bathed often for a localized problem and ends up losing its coat because of detergent/soap damage to the feathers, which Viola probably isn't in danger of.


Quote: Depends on the fly species. I lost one rooster to two different types of huge, segmented, hairy flesh eating maggots. No other bird out of hundreds got touched. They ate him alive.

Some maggots, which are usually non-flesh-eating, can become 'opportunistic' if desperate because the rotten flesh has been cleaned up, and some will start in the poop and just continue into the animal, like the maggots in a fly-struck sheep going from the wool into the flesh. Having poop on the actual skin, not just hanging from the feathers, can sicken and kill the skin and that's also where more maggots can get in.

 

[mg15]

Okay, better photos of 'ol poopbutt: you've been warned!

--- poop butt ---









I tried to get her to perch on my arm for a photo, which worked until I brought out the camera and then she was outa there!

This is 2 days after bathing her (she left with a completely clean butt!). This is Lightning, her butt is the worst - lots of feathers missing and matted poop. Lightning barely even has any tail feathers at all

Penny also has a poop butt, but hers is more matted and she isn't missing as many feathers. Hers is less severe.

Should I keep bathing one or both chickens every 2 days or so until the feathers fill in?

Mine developed poopy butt. I found out they all had lice. I had 15 killed by the dog. But I can tell you the one left that had poopy butt has been treated for lice, with Sevin 5 %. She no longer has poopy butt. Her whole vent area was covered with the nits. Just like the pictures on the internet.

I too have a runt, known as "Dwarf", hardly grows at all, and got her from a stranger. Somehow the strangers give me the ones they don't want and I dont know the difference. But they were chicks. Never had a dwarf chicken before, so another find out and see.

 

[cgoodloe]

Chooks4Life -
Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!!! Did I mention thank you?
No seriously. I've read and re-read your post multiple times over the past 2 days and haven't had a chance to respond yet. Thank you so much for going into so much detail, you explain things so well and really helped to put my mind at ease on certain issues!!

After your post, I decided it is time to work on taming the chickens I haven't been holding. I am noticing a marked difference in behavior with the chickens I have been bathing, so now I feel compelled to spend time with the non-affected chickens so they get to know me in the same way. Basically, if there isn't a reason for me to pick them up, I haven't been. Until yesterday, I never held Cersi or Rick Ross, but determined I brought them inside and sat in the bathroom with them.

Toss out sunflower kernels every morning first thing (before it gets too hot outside), your birdies will start following you around and knocking on your patio door (if they are free range everywhere in the yard). My Twinkie (a red star) knocked on the door every day waking me up if I wasn't out there with those kernels when she felt I should be. haha

 

[Tabatha]

Im New...So I Have No Expertise (And I Don't Know How To Stop My Phone From Typing Like This) Other Than I Spoil My Chickens And The Follow Me Every Where...Ride In The Car And Come In The House To Watch TV With Me...Anyway, Love This Post. I've Learned A Lot. This Answered Questions I Didn't Even Know I Had. (Cersi? Fellow Game Of Thrones Fan? Just Curious )

 

[Dook]

Im New...So I Have No Expertise (And I Don't Know How To Stop My Phone From Typing Like This) Other Than I Spoil My Chickens And The Follow Me Every Where...Ride In The Car And Come In The House To Watch TV With Me...Anyway, Love This Post. I've Learned A Lot. This Answered Questions I Didn't Even Know I Had. (Cersi? Fellow Game Of Thrones Fan? Just Curious )

One of my young roosters I named "Drogo".. sadly had fate the same =( but by a horrible sausage dog next door ;____;.. but.. GoT for win! <3

 

[Dook]

I have 1 hen from my original hatching, Imposter, she is 3 1/2 years old now, and she had a poopy butt thing going on for a while, I just ended up trimming all the poopy feathers and fresh ones grew back and no more poopy butt! X"D
My next oldest chicken, Flomp, from the second lot of hatchings is almost 3 and she had mite eggs around her rear end. I cut them all off and gave her an epic dusting and she grew back fluffy feathers too. She is also the mean chicken. I have 6 young chickens all 5 months old now who are terrified of Flomp she will never leave them alone when eating or roosting. Imposter is known to them as in charge, but she doesnt go so far with the pecking. So I usually seperate the young ones and Flomp by putting Imposter in the middle =P

Weird thing is the young rooster is terrified of Flomp as well. We thought he'd stand up to her by now! =P He is alot bigger than all the chickens now! But he is a bit of a sook, he loves cuddles ^__^ These young ones came from a different rooster daddy than the other two (same daddy) and they have very different personalities. A bit more skittish, but give in for pats eventually (even after being hand held every day since hatching!) the older two have always willingly come up for a pat/hold as well as all the others i had in those batches. (except the silky.. he was a petrified little man X"D but handled the same as all others) I recon there backgrounds have a big dominance in their behaviour towards people as well as how much they are handled! ^_^

As i mentioned in the above post... one of our young roosters fell prey to a sausage dog.. most least likely thing i would have ever imagined. But it did. The rooster some how got next door and instantly was attacked, my other half got over as fast as he could but it was too late. (saddest day of my life >.<) I now have trouble trusting that if I did get a dog, if it's be like that or kind? I also want a cat, but I think they are more trusting.. I'm yet to hear a fatal cat story yet! So I hope your's get along well =)

 

[jtutmark]

My cat and the neighborhood cats like to watch our chickens, but are too scared to try anything else. Sometimes the girls chase the cat away.

 

[jtutmark]

Also i now have a couple of girls who get picked on and are missing a lot of tail feathers. Then this spring I saw their feathers were coming back in, but they got picked out again.

 

[mg15]

Here is "Dwarf" the runt, seems to just not grow.