chicken poop and monitor lizard poop smells identical.

[chick n goat ma]

I like Savannah Monitor Lizards as house pets (kept like house cats and about the same size) paper trained due to their hemipenes not needing to get stuck on by cat litter.Very intelligent reptiles. Not kept in a cage or tank but free to crawl about the whole house. I found by adding a little oat or wheat bran to their mainly carnivorous diet firmed up their poop a bit and almost completely eliminated the stink.. I'm wondering if the same solution would also work for my beautiful chickens..Weren't birds just recently re-classified as reptiles, I mean just look at their scaly legs, talons for feet, beaks, combs and wattles,all very reptilian looking don't you think??? recently discovered dinosaur fossils had feathers before they evolved wings.






http://discovermagazine.com/2005/apr/cover



http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Wingless-theropod-gives-more-clues-birds-evolved-2927500.php

 

[chooks4life]

If your chickens' poops are watery or stink, they need to be treated, possibly, for cocci or another illness. Healthy animals rarely have stinky or watery poops. If they're not firm, rounded black and white poops, the chooks' digestive system or immune system isn't 100% for whatever reason. Some people only ever get dark green and white poops from their birds, it's considered normal too.

Oats are good for chooks too, definitely worth offering them some rolled oats or oat bran. Mine hate quick oats and so do my other animals though. Wheat bran is quite good for them too.

I like monitors, they're definitely underestimated in the intelligence department. I know one lady who keeps her water monitor like a dog, it's fully trained and all.

Best wishes.

 

[chick n goat ma]

thanks for the advice Chooks4life Here is what I feed my chooks, I make up a load every 5 to 7 days depending on their appetites they go nuts on it.

2 quarts Nutrena 'layer' chicken pellets
1 pint mixed grains (horse food)
1 pint rolled oats
1 large grated potato
2 med grated carrots
1 large finely chopped onion
1 stalk chopped celery
1 wrinkled green bell pepper(passed its prime but not rotten )
1/2 pint cut with scissors(about 1/2 inch lengths) grass
1/2 pint bread crumbs (from my stale bread)
6 chopped up seedless grapesbag of thawed blueberries (skin too tough for homo sapiens enjoyment)
4 oz grated suet
6 oz chopped mixed chicken, beef, keilbassa,,ham etc. (leftover meat from our dinners, never mind if it means they are cannibals, but they don't know it)
Used to give them medicated starter crumbles

On top of that smörgåsbord they also get to free roam the goats pen (1,500 sq ft) all day dawn to dusk

My chooks, like my goats are pets and I spoil em rotten for my pleasure in my dotage..

but because I am a nube at this game I might be feeding them something that is not good for them, what do you think?

btw you do have a lot of magnificent monitor lizards in the land of Oz. too bad Australia no longer permits them to be exported for the pet market, not skinned for bags or shoes or belts but to be cared for by peop[le like me who really like them.

I like this part of your page very much. , Sounds very much like my husband.


"Self-sufficiency farmer with all sorts of all sorts, aiming to get more sorts of more sorts. Working on my own strains & breeds.
Athlete, nerd, artist, gamer, writer, maker-of-stuff, perpetual student. Ignorance is not bliss, it's suffering! I may be strange but I'm not malicious, so if I give offense please reconsider taking it. "

 

[chooks4life]

Thanks, a few people seem to like my signature.

About the feed you're giving them, sounds generally quite good, but it's variable in whether shop bought food, or food that's been in refrigerators, is contaminated. Even seemingly clean fridges often contain nasty bacteria capable of making chooks sick, and shopbought food.. What can you say? It's loaded.

I don't give my animals storebought grapes, can rarely eat them myself, in Australia they are more often than not just reeking of human gastrointestinal bugs, which smells like sickly fecal matter. Don't know if it's from the 'atmosphere' in shops (all those people expelling gases and sneezing/coughing etc all day in shops all over the produce) or due to fertilization using human manure (I've worked on grape farms before and many farmers would panic at the idea of someone eating their grapes off the vine because of the chemicals and waste used on them. Potential lawsuits galore). But when we used to let chooks and other animals eat our leftover/old grapes, they would always get sick, and the same applies to many other fruits.

I generally practice more biosecurity in my kitchen and house than outside it as in my experience most gastrointestinal upsets my chooks had came from humans. School age kids are veritable vectors of parasites and diseases. Some of my animals refuse to eat treats they normally can't resist from a child's hands due to the bacteria they can smell there, and I'm not postulating that because I can smell it on them too. Often you can smell the same smell in a chooks' poop that's just been produced by kids with stomach upsets they picked up from school and the same smell and diarrhea goes through most domestic species we have, dogs, cats, sheep etc despite the physiological differences... Soon enough the animals learn what's making them sick and try to avoid it. If I'm not careful with not introducing normal human bacterias from our kitchen, fridge, etc, into their food, often as not they get sick. Almost impossible to maintain enough hygiene with kids of school age, every main doorknob is contaminated every day multiple times. Disinfecting the doorknobs is one way to stop disease spreading as odd as that may sound.

I'm not sure about the suet though, excess fat can be quite harmful to their livers and hearts... Added fat isn't normally a part of a diet known to do poultry too much good in the long term, especially depending on what breeds they are as some, particularly laying and meat breeds, are very prone to excessive fat laydown internally and in the liver which is a fairly common cause of ill health and death among them on diets not fat-restricted.

Some have been bred to crave more fat than they need and can't process it correctly so while they will always go nuts for it, it is life threatening to give them more than what comes in their pellets or the raw fats they find in seeds, insects etc. On that topic raw fat is far better for them than cooked, same as with all proteins and oils. A little bit of cooked stuff won't hurt, doesn't really sound like you're overdoing anything, but some individuals/strains/breeds can't cope with what others can. If their poop always stinks and is always runny I'd treat them. I'd add a clove or two per bird of raw garlic to that feed personally, I use it as a staple with mine because it's often been quite the lifesaver and it's completely ensured I've never had a cocci case among mine.

Depending on how long you let the chopped grass sit before feeding it to them, it could be building up dangerous levels of gas inside them and giving them upset stomachs so to speak because it begins to decompose rapidly once cut, even while looking fresh it can be an issue. It's one of those things, generally they're fine, you never have problems, or they're not fine and you do have problems. Most horse owners would be aghast at the idea of giving a horse lawnmowing clippings but some do it religiously with no problems. Then again plenty of others die from it. I'm not sure why there is such a discrepancy there to be honest. Also the length might be an issue, causing it to ferment for longer than normal, since when allowed to pick their own grass I rarely see them take more than an inch at a time.

Yeah, the Aussie monitors are pretty interesting, I've had to remove a few from coops before and even wild ones show a lot of keen intelligence and sharp observation and perception skills.

Best wishes.

 

[chick n goat ma]

"rounded black and white poops" sound about what my chooks poop looks like, I will heed your advice and add a couple of cloves of garlic, I store their food in a closed tupperware container in the fridge which I keep very cold so no cross contamination should occur, I will leave out the grass too as they get plenty of that when free ranging,and will also cut down on the suet but I will add some greens instead, cabbage/lettuce/spinach/broccoli. . I always wash all the veggies and fruit before chopping/grating them, Their poop stinks like chicken ****, which is what it's supposed to smell like, I've yet to meet the creature whose **** smelled like roses except my own

. Thanks for all the information, I live and learn, I will continue to give due consideration.

Best wishes to you too

 

[chooks4life]

If their poop is normally healthy looking you're doing well, the only time I'd be concerned is if it's normally diarrhea and stinky... I mean a real stench, not some flowery scent, just normal healthy poops don't smell like sick ones, lol.

That said I know a few chook keepers who have diarrhea among their flock as a rule and think that's normal. :/

Best wishes.