Not pooping at night

FeatherWeather

In the Brooder
Dec 22, 2022
30
20
44
Sacramento County, CA
My 18 month old girl Snowball is not pooping at night. Last night was the second night. She's always had way less poop than my other girls. I can tell because she sleeps on a different roost by herself. I checked her crop before bed but she is hard to handle so I couldn't palpate fully but I could definitely tell it wasn't full and hard like my other girls. I took out their food and water overnight and checked her crop this morning and it was empty. She is eating drinking and behaving normally. Her comb is still dark red. She has stopped laying, but she is in a soft molt.
I'm not sure if she's emptying her crop before bed or if I should be concerned about impacted crop. I had a girl with impacted/sour crop last year and I'm pretty sure it was worms. Should I go ahead and worm them or what should else can I do?
 
Just as humans have differing bowel habits, so do chickens. Some move a prodigious amount of poop at night, while others may dump the load before they roost, then dump another large load right after they eat something. Poop or no poop, it's only a problem when it's accompanied by a behavior change.

An empty flat crop in the morning indicates normal crop function or starvation. If it's the latter, you'd see lethargy, not normal behavior.
 

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