Help!! Constipated chicken? Yesterday, I noticed my hen wasn't acting like her self. She seemed a bit down. This morning I found her just standing in the coop, tilted back like she was going to do a poo, but nothing came out. She isn't moving around and just sits there with her eyes closed. She looks like she's in pain but I don't know what to do. I offered her some of her favourite food ( whole wheat) and she only ate a little bit. I separated her from the others just in case it's a disease. She has been pooing out this white stuff. Does anyone know what it is? I found this under their roost. A couple weeks ago I added pine shavings in their coop for the first time. I saw they were eating it. A day or too after they stopped. Could this be the problem?
Recently a few pine shavings (I use "sand" made from ground up rocks in my coop) have gotten into the coop and my chickens tried to eat them, but their poop is still normal looking. The shavings themselves may just be ones from the ground. The best way to tell if the shavings are in the poop is by having the chicken poop outside. For constipation,I first recommend that the chickens are given access to grass. Chickens will not digest the stuff fully, but they do extract the fiber from the grass. Just make sure the grass is short to prevent sour crop. Pretty much anything high in fiber will do the job, but I do not recommend flax seed, since it doesn't really digest and will just come out in the poop. And I'm pretty sure (don't take my word for it) that if the flaxseeds are broken that the chicken eats them that day so that way this chemical doesn't build up in the flax, making it bad for chickens to eat.
