One chicken down, red-brown poop

[Celticdragonfly]

We lost our first chicken recently, a one year old hen that my daughter just found dead one day, we hadn't seen any problems before that.

My daughter is noticing that with our remaining two hens, she's seeing poop on the poop board that looks reddish.

Any ideas what this may be? Is there anything we can treat them for/with?

 

[Isaac 0]

Could you post a few pictures of the poop?

How old are these hens?

 

[Celticdragonfly]

Pic from phone, commentary coming from the keyboard next.

 

[Celticdragonfly]

That's the pic my daughter sent me earlier, she was down there and I was upstairs. It looked brownish to me, but my daughter assured me it was redder than she normally saw.

Both remaining girls are 1 year, 3 months old.

Doing some reading, I suspect coccidosis? So I went to the Tractor Supply, only farm supply store near that was still open, and finally managed to find a bottle of Corid. (Gosh it's hard to say/type that instead of covid. No, I did not want to buy a bottle of covid, thankyouverymuch.)

Ended up with 10 ml syringes from the drugstore that I had to cut the needles off with a box cutter to use, my daughter said welcome to the jury-rigging world that is vet med. (Her field of study). We did the drench doses at night, picking the two of them off the roost to do it, so now I have learned how to do that. My daughter will be going out at dawn to replace their water supply with the corid-dosed water.

 

[Isaac 0]

Have you fed them any red-colored treats like tomatoes lately? Are there are red berries around your property they may be eating?

Treating them with Corid isn't going to hurt, but Coccidiosis typically affects younger birds the most.

 

[Celticdragonfly]

They get tomatoes as treats, yes. But this is not a new recent thing, they love them.

 

[Isaac 0]

They get tomatoes as treats, yes. But this is not a new recent thing, they love them.

Is it pretty hot where you are? They may be eating less feed, and just tomatoes and water, resulting in a reddish colored poop. I would stop the red treats for a day or two and see if the color of the poop changes back to normal.

 

[Kiki]

I would not suspect coccidiosis either.

Do you feed treats often?


Your other one that died...did she die recently?

 

[Celticdragonfly]

They get some tomatoes - most typically a few cherry tomatoes in ice cubes - when it's particularly hot weather.

My 3rd hen, Steggie, died on the 17th.