runny poop in my pen

[gretchen]

This is my first batch of chicks, so I'm new at this and hence a little bit of a nervous nellie. I have been noticing runny poop in the outside run for a couple of days. I have 7 chickens in it and can't see who the culprit might be. Should I be worried? I haven't been using medicated feed and they seem happy and spunky enough. They are 10 weeks old now. I have 2 kids, a dog, a life, a job, a summer and don't want to jump through alot of hoops and have to go through seperating and medicating if I don't have to but at the same time I don't want any of them to die.

 

[allen wranch]

Are you seeing any blood ? Is the poop kind of mustard like and very smelly ? If blood, you need to treat for cocci NOW. If the poop really smells bad, it may be from all of your birds. They release poo from different parts of their intestines, and the ones from the cecal area smell bad, but are normal.

Also, because of the summer heat, birds drink a little more and their poop can sometimes be watery.

Just keep an eye out and watch for any blood, listlessness, or other abnormal signs.

 

[gretchen]

No blood but it's been raining here constantly and very damp... and yes the run smells pretty bad right now even though I keep raking up the poops and chucking them in my compost. I just went out to shut them in for the night and it was quite an aroma! I'll keep an eye out, thank you!

 

[FarmerDenise]

I agree with allen wranch.

 

[Pine Grove]

If they have been on damp dirt you can be 99.9% sure they have coccidiosis. I'd put them on a coccidiostat(corid,sulmet) just follow directions on the bottle

 

[gretchen]

So I went to the feed store and got some Sulfadimethoxine to use.... problem is that I am going away for 10 days starting tomorrow. Should I wait until I return to start the meds or burden my house sitter with one more thing to do while I'm away?

 

[Pine Grove]

yep, I'd burden my house keeper lol..cocci is nothing to play with, once they have a full blown case of cocci, its hard to get them back on track