Goose has bad breath

[A Couple of Geese]

Hi everyone,

I noticed a little while ago that my male goose has pretty bad breath. Sometimes it's worse than other times, and I thought it was going away but it's not. I was reading about sour crop, but I'm not sure. He seems completely fine, it's just the breath thing. His crop doesn't appear full or anything, so I'm wondering what this could be.

Thank you.

 

[Goosebaby]

What has he been eating since this began?

How would you describe the smell? Yeasty or bread like? Something like cooked cauliflower or broccoli? Or something really pungent and foul?

How have his droppings looked lately? Mostly like little logs? Mostly runny? Have you noticed any unusual colors like bright green, lots of white, red, black, or orange? Have you seen foamy or bubbly droppings?


Geese don’t exactly have a crop, more like a modified throat that can expand and temporarily store food. They can get bad breath from a form of crop stasis caused by slow digestion or gas.
Slow digestion can be caused from a number of issues, GI inflammation from infection, a mass in the body, carcinoma, enlarged organs, worms, Candida, coccidia, lead or zinc toxicity or certain viruses. Excessive gas can cause slow digestion, it can be caused by good or bad bacteria, for example probiotics can cause gas.

Usually you’ll see accompanying symptoms of some sort of GI issue, like lethargy, depression, “quiet subdued behavior, standing with his head tucked for long periods of time,” standing with a somewhat sprawled stance, frequent squinting, difficulty swallowing, and weird droppings.

 

[Goosebaby]

Lead and zinc poisoning makes them incredibly ill, like sitting in the corner unable to walk kind ill with green or brown urates, so it’s less likely as a possibility.

 

[A Couple of Geese]

What has he been eating since this began?

How would you describe the smell? Yeasty or bread like? Something like cooked cauliflower or broccoli? Or something really pungent and foul?

How have his droppings looked lately? Mostly like little logs? Mostly runny? Have you noticed any unusual colors like bright green, lots of white, red, black, or orange? Have you seen foamy or bubbly droppings?


Geese don’t exactly have a crop, more like a modified throat that can expand and temporarily store food. They can get bad breath from a form of crop stasis caused by slow digestion or gas.
Slow digestion can be caused from a number of issues, GI inflammation from infection, a mass in the body, carcinoma, enlarged organs, worms, Candida, coccidia, lead or zinc toxicity or certain viruses. Excessive gas can cause slow digestion, it can be caused by good or bad bacteria, for example probiotics can cause gas.

Usually you’ll see accompanying symptoms of some sort of GI issue, like lethargy, depression, “quiet subdued behavior, standing with his head tucked for long periods of time,” standing with a somewhat sprawled stance, frequent squinting, difficulty swallowing, and weird droppings.

They go out and eat grass during the day for those hours, and they eat Dumar All Flock during the times they're inside. I also provide nutritional yeast mixed into the pellets. I'll also give them greens like kale and broccoli once in a while.

What has he been eating since this began?

How would you describe the smell? Yeasty or bread like? Something like cooked cauliflower or broccoli? Or something really pungent and foul?

How have his droppings looked lately? Mostly like little logs? Mostly runny? Have you noticed any unusual colors like bright green, lots of white, red, black, or orange? Have you seen foamy or bubbly droppings?


Geese don’t exactly have a crop, more like a modified throat that can expand and temporarily store food. They can get bad breath from a form of crop stasis caused by slow digestion or gas.
Slow digestion can be caused from a number of issues, GI inflammation from infection, a mass in the body, carcinoma, enlarged organs, worms, Candida, coccidia, lead or zinc toxicity or certain viruses. Excessive gas can cause slow digestion, it can be caused by good or bad bacteria, for example probiotics can cause gas.

Usually you’ll see accompanying symptoms of some sort of GI issue, like lethargy, depression, “quiet subdued behavior, standing with his head tucked for long periods of time,” standing with a somewhat sprawled stance, frequent squinting, difficulty swallowing, and weird droppings.

I feed them Dumor All Flock when they're indoors in their pen. I also give them Timothy Meadow Hay. I'll give them greens like broccoli and kale occasionally. They eat grass when they're outside in the day.

I'd say the breath is a bit of a kick in the face. It's a warm/hot sour kind of smell. Sometimes I don't notice it, but it seems on and off. He'll also do this deflating sound when I pick him up sometimes, like he's letting air out. I don't know if that really matters or means anything. He does what looks like yawning a bunch through the day, too.

Their droppings have always seemed liquidy, but they have the small, more solid ones too. There's the occasional really foul smelling dark brown liquidy droppings as well. It almost feels like they're different every time. I have seen white droppings at times, both solid and liquid looking. There's been greenish but I wouldn't say bright.

He's his usual energetic self. The only newer behavior is they've both been sleeping standing up with their neck and head folding into their wings more lately, sometimes doing the one foot thing. He used to sit a lot more I'd say.

Thanks again!

 

[Goosebaby]

They go out and eat grass during the day for those hours, and they eat Dumar All Flock during the times they're inside. I also provide nutritional yeast mixed into the pellets. I'll also give them greens like kale and broccoli once in a while.

I feed them Dumor All Flock when they're indoors in their pen. I also give them Timothy Meadow Hay. I'll give them greens like broccoli and kale occasionally. They eat grass when they're outside in the day.

I'd say the breath is a bit of a kick in the face. It's a warm/hot sour kind of smell. Sometimes I don't notice it, but it seems on and off. He'll also do this deflating sound when I pick him up sometimes, like he's letting air out. I don't know if that really matters or means anything. He does what looks like yawning a bunch through the day, too.

Their droppings have always seemed liquidy, but they have the small, more solid ones too. There's the occasional really foul smelling dark brown liquidy droppings as well. It almost feels like they're different every time. I have seen white droppings at times, both solid and liquid looking. There's been greenish but I wouldn't say bright.

He's his usual energetic self. The only newer behavior is they've both been sleeping standing up with their neck and head folding into their wings more lately, sometimes doing the one foot thing. He used to sit a lot more I'd say.

Thanks again!

My guess based on what you’ve described is that they (both) have picked up some sort of bug from the pasture, maybe a bacteria or parasite, or they are struggling to digest the hay and it’s having a fermenting effect in their gut with the yeast supplement, hence the sour smell.

Most droppings should be soft logs, with liquid type droppings if they’ve been eating watery foods like cucumber, melon, apple, or drinking extra water. If their droppings are mostly liquid most of the time “polyuria” that’s due to some sort of issue with the gut, like inflammation. The occasional really foul smelling one with the consistency of pudding is normal, it’s a cecal dropping.

Standing up with head folded into the wing as you described is typical of depression in geese, we think of depression as purely emotional, but in birds it’s a symptom of illness too. Standing like that occasionally is nothing to worry about, but considering that they’re doing this more often lately is cause for concern. Something is making them both feel off.
If these are their only symptoms so far it means you’ve caught it early, as it progresses it’s a tougher recovery.

If you can collect some droppings in a bag I would suggest sending it to a vet for a fecal float and fecal stain to see what’s going on. In my state vets won’t do that without bringing them in for an examination, but some of the old school farm vets will test without making you go through that hassle, assuming you’re lucky enough to find a farm vet....

If it’s a yeast infection typical treatment is with nystatin if it’s a mild case, Fluconazole if it’s a moderate to serious case.
If it’s bacteria related baytril is a good choice antibiotic, if it’s giardia or clostridium something like metronidazole or a sulpha antibiotic is usually prescribed.
You might try worming them with albendazole or safe guard, ivermectin isn’t all that effective with worms sometimes.
You could try treating with corid just incase it’s coccidia, toltrazuril is more effective from my own expierience but it’s pricey.

If a vet isn’t an option you can try treating on your own with fish antibiotics, but that can end up being more costly and unrewarding in the long run not knowing the exact cause of the problem.

 

[Goosebaby]

Some examples of droppings

Normal dropping



Abnormal, caused by some sort of inflammatory GI illness, possibly clostridium, giardia, E.coli among others.



Polyuria with increased urates, possibly caused by coccidia, mycoplasma, infectious bronchitis or a bacterial infection. Most likely in this case coccidia.




This is the shade of green you never want to see, caused by poisoning, liver damage, or in this case anorexia due to another illness.


The camera didn’t pick up the color correctly on this one, it’s sort of an orange, salmon color. This is caused by mucus and stomach lining from my gander Roxby earlier this week, he started showing similar signs of depression followed by difficulty swallowing, poor appetite and slow digestion and eventually droppings like this. I’m currently treating him for a bacterial infection, he was wormed with albendazole and treated with toltrazuril but recovery has been slow, he’s eating more but still struggles to swallow so I may try giving safe-guard. He developed a horrible case of bad breath when I began giving probiotics.

 

[A Couple of Geese]

Thank you for this, it helps a lot.

So, I monitored them both pretty closely today. They just came back inside now.

The beginning of the day their droppings were this:

I noticed these droppings in their pen area outside from yesterday:

Later in the day today, these were their droppings:

And at the end of the day when they were brought in it was this:

I noticed his breath today was not bad at all. I was thinking about it today, and the grass in their pen is picked over. I went out of my way today to make sure they ate grass and dandelion greens around the yard. I'm wonderig if their diet has just been too much All Flock and not enough grass. I also monitored their neck tucking behavior, and they only did it for about 45 minutes once in the day, and were otherwise very active.

 

[Goosebaby]

Those look pretty normal, the smell could be too much yeast + issues with the hay, hay can be tough to digest and can slow down their digestive tract leading to bacteria and yeast buildup and gas.
All flock shouldn’t be an issue, though not all batches of feed can be the same, some mixes of feed can be off, some geese get bagged food all winter in areas where pasture is non existent because of the weather, usually droppings will still look like logs, just without the grass bits and green color, so my guess is something is off with their digestion either because of the hay, yeast, or some kind of stomach bug.
It could resolve itself, maybe experiment with adding yeast only once a week and reduce their hay, if their condition worsens maybe try to get some fecal tests done.

 

[A Couple of Geese]

Those look pretty normal, the smell could be too much yeast + issues with the hay, hay can be tough to digest and can slow down their digestive tract leading to bacteria and yeast buildup and gas.
All flock shouldn’t be an issue, though not all batches of feed can be the same, some mixes of feed can be off, some geese get bagged food all winter in areas where pasture is non existent because of the weather, usually droppings will still look like logs, just without the grass bits and green color, so my guess is something is off with their digestion either because of the hay, yeast, or some kind of stomach bug.
It could resolve itself, maybe experiment with adding yeast only once a week and reduce their hay, if their condition worsens maybe try to get some fecal tests done.

I'm going to take away the hay and decrease the amount I use the yeast, at least for a while. If things remain a concern I'll seek out a vet I think.

Thanks so much for all the help!

 

[Goosebaby]

I hope all goes well!