Rumpless adult silkie + pasty butt

[jillianjo]

I have 5 month old silkies from Cackle Hatchery, and one of the hens never grew a tail, I’m guessing it was some sort of genetic mutation because all the other silkies were breed standard. She seems perfectly normal other than that, but I’m now running into some issues with something like pasty butt. I read somewhere that rumpless chickens can have issues pooping and laying and I’m guessing that’s the case here. (She hasn’t started laying yet so I have no idea how that’s going to go.)

She basically can’t seem to do the “poop squat” that chickens do, so all the poop collects around her vent. It’s not that it’s super runny or anything like that, she doesn’t have diarrhea and it all looks like normal chicken poop, it just doesn’t seem to go anywhere. And of course once her butt feathers get dirty it just continues to build up. I have trimmed her butt feathers as much as I can, but I’m still having to do a butt washing on her every week and a half or so just so her vent isn’t completely blocked.

It’s honestly a lot of work, I have to hold her butt under the faucet and use soap to slowly break up all the stuck-on clumps of rock hard poop. She’s very squirmy and does not enjoy the process. I try to only keep her butt under the faucet because I don’t want her to get fully soaked since I end up having to dry her under the blow dryer for a while. Ideally I think she could be washed every few days to stay really clean but I simply don’t have the time to do it so often.

Has anyone run into this issue before? Is there anything I can even do about it or do I have to just manually clean her butt all the time? Or maybe any advice on how to make the cleaning easier? Will anything change once she starts laying?

At this point I’ve even considered rehoming her because I’m worried she’s going to have a lifetime of special needs that I’m not equipped to handle. Hoping to see if anyone here has any advice before I resort to that.

Here’s a photo of her from when she was 2 months old where you can see the lack of the cotton ball tail. She’s much fluffier and basically full grown nowadays but still no tail.

 

[CCsGarden]

I'm sorry I don't know how to help.
@Debbie292d is an expert at silkies!

 

[Debbie292d]

I have 5 month old silkies from Cackle Hatchery, and one of the hens never grew a tail, I’m guessing it was some sort of genetic mutation because all the other silkies were breed standard. She seems perfectly normal other than that, but I’m now running into some issues with something like pasty butt. I read somewhere that rumpless chickens can have issues pooping and laying and I’m guessing that’s the case here. (She hasn’t started laying yet so I have no idea how that’s going to go.)

She basically can’t seem to do the “poop squat” that chickens do, so all the poop collects around her vent. It’s not that it’s super runny or anything like that, she doesn’t have diarrhea and it all looks like normal chicken poop, it just doesn’t seem to go anywhere. And of course once her butt feathers get dirty it just continues to build up. I have trimmed her butt feathers as much as I can, but I’m still having to do a butt washing on her every week and a half or so just so her vent isn’t completely blocked.

It’s honestly a lot of work, I have to hold her butt under the faucet and use soap to slowly break up all the stuck-on clumps of rock hard poop. She’s very squirmy and does not enjoy the process. I try to only keep her butt under the faucet because I don’t want her to get fully soaked since I end up having to dry her under the blow dryer for a while. Ideally I think she could be washed every few days to stay really clean but I simply don’t have the time to do it so often.

Has anyone run into this issue before? Is there anything I can even do about it or do I have to just manually clean her butt all the time? Or maybe any advice on how to make the cleaning easier? Will anything change once she starts laying?

At this point I’ve even considered rehoming her because I’m worried she’s going to have a lifetime of special needs that I’m not equipped to handle. Hoping to see if anyone here has any advice before I resort to that.

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Here’s a photo of her from when she was 2 months old where you can see the lack of the cotton ball tail. She’s much fluffier and basically full grown nowadays but still no tail.

I've not seen the missing tail-feather anomaly on any of mine, and assume yours was either injured as a chick or has a genetic flaw.

Regardless, I've had a couple of "poopy butt" chickens through the years, but it comes from their digestive system, not how they were built. For those, we do what you do in cutting off their rear feathers, but as an adult, that only needs to be done every couple of months, not weeks. I also up their probiotics, which helps make their poop not so loose or sloppy, if that's the problem.

Try giving them all some probiotics and see if that helps that one at all. Probiotics comes in powders for their water, granuals for their feed, or regular Greek yogurt. If yogurt, about a tablespoon each a day would be what I've done, as a treat mostly. To serve it, I take a few paper plates, rip them into fourths, plop a bit on each one and set them all over the yard.