My Australorps have weird poop...is this normal for the breed?

[Toodles]

I have 4 Barred Rocks, 4 RIR that are 4 years old and 5 Australorps (3 hens, 2 roosters) that are 10 1/2 months old. The older hens have always had normal poop. However, the Australorps ever since they were a few months old have often had this black, liquidy, poop. Very watery sometimes thick and lots of it! The roosters also get the shavings really wet with a clear liquid, almost like urine (?).

I've had chickens for almost 10 years and never encountered this. Is this normal for the breed? And is the watery clear liquid normal for roosters? I've always had just hens except for one RIR rooster that we didn't keep very long due to his aggressiveness but his poop was just like the hens.

They seem to be very healthy just concerned about this weird poop. I feed them fermented, organic, layer feed. They are pastured free-range most of the year except winter when they have access to a large fenced yard. A few of then seemed slow to mature, they never laid any eggs until just recently, and their combs and waddles took a long time to grow except in one rooster and one hen. The other 3 still seem underdeveloped.

I started a previous thread about them last year and the fact that they came from Privett hatchery via the local feed store. Don't seem to be the best quality birds AND were all supposed to be hens!

Any advice is appreciated!

 

[Eggcessive]

Do you have any pictures of the droppings? It might be something like coccidiosis or enteritis or even worms. You could gather some fresh droppings, and have your local vet test them for worms and cocci, and ask for a gram stain for bacteria which could look for enteritis. Do you older hens eat the fermented feed without having similar droppings? I would make sure that your feed contains probiotics, or add some plain yogurt with cultures to their feed daily, and later, a couple of days a week.

 

[Toodles]

I'll have to take some pictures of the poop. The older hens eat the same fermented feed, live in the same coop and yard yet their poop is normal, always has been. Fermenting the feed produces probiotics, so essentially they get probiotics every day. I sometimes feed then plain, organic, yogurt as a treat and extra source of probiotics.

I'll try opening capsules of the probiotics I take and adding to their feed for a week or so as well as adding the yogurt and hope that helps.

A friend of mine said her roosters are messier than her hens and have a watery type poop too. Is that watery stuff normal for roosters?

 

[Eggcessive]

I have had a few chickens who have watery droppings that just squirt out. It just depends on the time of year and what they eat. I used fermented feed for most of a year several years ago, and mine had more watery droppings then. It's hard to say what is going on without a fecal test, though. If they are all active, alert, and seemingly normal it might just be that they are having a lot of cecal droppings.