Hen's feces doesn't look digested, full of grass - Advice?

Aspen Anderson

Chirping
May 21, 2017
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My Coop
My Coop
Our three oldest hens - all almost 5 months old - have had diarrhea for a while now. I've looked up some suggestions, and I am currently working on the following:
  • Changing their water source (as the current one is dripping, attracting flies and getting their food wet)
  • Deworming them (I haven't yet, but I will asap)
  • Slowly transitioning them to a new feed appropriate for their age. (I've been mixing the new feed in with the old feed to help them adjust. Please let me know if this is a good or bad idea!). I've been feeding them Purina.
  • Lessening their protein intake as well as other desserts (such as mealworms and apples)
  • Placing fly traps and other fly deterrents around the outside of their coop.
I've noticed some improvements upon trying these suggestions, however we discovered full grass in one of our 5 month old hens' fecal matter. I haven't noticed this in any of the other hens, but it was definitely strange. My hens love to eat grass when I let them out to forage about, but I've never seen this before. It was very long, and the grass wasn't digested in the least (covered in a thin layer of normal feces).

I just needed some advice. Is this something serious that I should take her to the vet for, or is it something I could easily take care of at home? If so, what could I do? I would prefer to take care of it myself, but am more than willing to take her to the animal hospital if it's something life threatening.

(She's a Speckled Sussex hen, almost 5 months old. I'm not sure her weight, and I don't really have anything to test that, unfortunately. She seems a little thin - not too drastically so - but I figured that was due to the diarrhea she's fighting. Let me know if there's any other information I should give and I'll do my best to provide it.)

I'll admit to being a bit of a beginner, so I'm still learning. I want to do what's best for our cuties to ensure they're happy and healthy!
 
Does your flock have access to free choice grit?

Please give more details about the poop. For example, is it solid or is it watery with green matter?
 
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Here's the image of the poop. It's a day old, but hopefully it's still good enough to tell what's going on. The brown is the regular poop, but it's mostly just grass. When it first came out, it was more solid than watery.
I haven't noticed it since, though, and mentioned hen seems to be fine aside from this.

I haven't gotten any free choice grit, but if you think that'll help I'll definitely look into that! I also recently purchased diatomaceous earth. I don't know if that'll help with this specific problem, but I thought I'd throw that out there just in case.
 
I've never seen my chickens have poop this undigested. Maybe someone else on here has experienced this.
As far as the grit is concerned, they should always have free choice grit. You are asking for digestive or crop issues otherwise. I also offer my hens free choice oyster shell.
My flock is allowed to free range daily. They may not always find the proper grit to digest food.
 

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