Soiled Black Wet Butt

[fancyflea]

Not sure what this might be. My white Americana has had a wet black butt for a few weeks now. I have 26 chickens and they free range during the day on 8 acres. During the evenings they are in a clean coop with a 50' run. I feed them Purina Pellets. Would love to know if anyone has any ideas what could be wrong. I am willing to do more research if I knew what to look up.

 

[Eggcessive]

Two things--she might just have a poopy butt, either do to drinking lots of water and having too much fluff. You can trim it off once a month, clean her up, and give her yogurt twice a week and apple cider vinegar 1/2 oz per gallon of water. Secondly she may have vent gleet, a fungal infection that smells bad and causes oozing white material and redness around the vent (think yeast infection.) Treatment is the same as above plus mycostatin or other antifungal cream, or Nustock a cream from the feedstore applied daily.

 

[fancyflea]

I just noticed she is just lying down now and is very slow when she moves around. I will try and clean her etc when my husband gets home.

 

[fancyflea]

By the way, will it spread to any of my other chickens?

 

[Eggcessive]

I doubt it but some sites say that it can spread by the rooster. Check her crop in the morning for sour crop (full squishy balloon-like.) Could she have coccidiosis? Symptoms are lethargy, ruffled feathers, puffing up with tail down, and diarrhea (sometimes bloody.) Treatment would be Corid (amprollium,) a cattle med, 2 tsp liquid or 1 tsp powder to 1 gallon of water for 5-7 days. Older hens can get it if they are new to the land where new stains are present, or when a new strain is brought in by new chickens or on the shoes.

 

[fancyflea]

I think she has vent gleet like you said. I washed her butt real good and trimmed her feathers. The skin was purple back there, had a really bad smell and she felt really skinny. I don't have a good feeling about her. I put her in a seperate cage with fresh pine shavings, clean water and food. I am going to put vinegar in her water tomorrow and give her a bit of plain yogurt as suggested in my research. I am going to bath her butt daily and put hydrogen peroxide on the skin as I did today.

 

[MelissaTXRn]

An anti fungal cream, like Monistat, would probably work very well.
Vent gleet is basically a yeast infection.

 

[fancyflea]

Got the monostat and started using it this morning. Fingers crossed.

 

[fancyflea]

Anything special I should be feeding her?

 

[Eggcessive]

Plain unsweetened yogurt, maybe some extra protein like eggs, and just her chicken feed. Don't feed too many treats like scratch.