Pasty butt?

[Blisskat]

This happened last year with our little silkie. The only thing my husband could really think to do, was clean up the chick and extract the poop by hand everyday. It was pretty awful to be so tied to a chicky's butt like that for about a month it seemed, but she did survive, and is doing quite well now.

I haven't been a member of this forum for very long now, or we would have tried some of the other suggestions for sure! It's good to know now that perhaps this is something the silkies are prone to have happen....

 

[Jenski]

Brooder temperature can have something to do with pasty butt as well - - either too hot or too cold. It's worth checking.

Also - - many folks here (myself included) would recommend AGAINST picking off any dried poo. You can seriously injure a chick by doing this. I run their little bums under warm water in the bathroom sink, and very gently wipe with a wet paper towel or cloth. Eventually the poo softens and falls off.

Hope that helps!

 

[happyhensny]

I have raised a few batches of chicks. Silkies seem to be way more prone to poopy butts. Thought I was done with butt wiping when my last child got out of diapers.

 

[andisgarden]

I have noticed the talk about silkies having this problem but of all of my chickies I notice the runny poop keeps happening with my Polish babies all of the other chicks bottoms look great. I keep wiping 3 of the Polish and there are 27 chicks total and all of the others are thriving and doing well. I lost one of the Polish already and it had a clean bottom, go figure.

What might I be doing wrong? Some of my other chicks don't have the pasty butt thing but, they do have runny poop.

 

[CluckCluck18]

I'm having a heck of a time, too. Have 4 Araucana chicks that I hatched from shipped eggs. They had horrible pasty butt and for 4 days I sat with them and squeezed and extracted poop from them.....2 died and the remaining 2 improved quite alot and I thought we were out of the woods. They are 2 weeks old and today they look like they are having trouble again. They already have ACV and vitamins in the water, probiotics in the food and play sand which is supposed to help. Do you think I should give them a few drops of olive oil?