At least one of my 1.5 year old hens is having extremely watery droppings. I have been noticing them for at least a week when I scoop the poop board in the mornings. Probably longer, I neglected the poop board cleaning for a few weeks and removed and replaced all of the stall dry about a week ago and there were a few areas where the old substrate was absolutely soaked.
Yesterday I was hanging out with the chickens and saw my RIR pass an extremely watery stool so right now she's my prime suspect. Her comb is a little pale and she hasn't laid in a few weeks, but she's in the middle of molting so that's not unusual. Otherwise acting completely normal, eating and drinking normally. The solid part of the stool looks normal from what I can tell and there are no excessive urates or signs of intestinal shed.
These hens are mostly confined to a large covered run with occasional supervised excursions to the adjacent fenced garden. Feed is free choice 20% all flock pellet with fermented meat bird crumble once a day or every other day. Treats are kitchen scraps (mostly produce, salad that's about to go bad, pumpkin guts, etc with occasional small amounts of meat scraps, rice, and bread products) once every 1-3 weeks and weeds pulled from the yard/garden about once a month. I also know we have mice in the coop because I have seen droppings. So their exposure is low, but not zero.
So the question is whether to deworm or not with no other symptoms other than watery stools from one, maybe two hens. I've never done prophylactic deworming on my chickens before, but we do prophylactically deworm the dogs and cats when they get their flea medicine so I'm not really opposed to the idea. And with half the flock not laying anyway due to molt the timing couldn't be better.
Yesterday I was hanging out with the chickens and saw my RIR pass an extremely watery stool so right now she's my prime suspect. Her comb is a little pale and she hasn't laid in a few weeks, but she's in the middle of molting so that's not unusual. Otherwise acting completely normal, eating and drinking normally. The solid part of the stool looks normal from what I can tell and there are no excessive urates or signs of intestinal shed.
These hens are mostly confined to a large covered run with occasional supervised excursions to the adjacent fenced garden. Feed is free choice 20% all flock pellet with fermented meat bird crumble once a day or every other day. Treats are kitchen scraps (mostly produce, salad that's about to go bad, pumpkin guts, etc with occasional small amounts of meat scraps, rice, and bread products) once every 1-3 weeks and weeds pulled from the yard/garden about once a month. I also know we have mice in the coop because I have seen droppings. So their exposure is low, but not zero.
So the question is whether to deworm or not with no other symptoms other than watery stools from one, maybe two hens. I've never done prophylactic deworming on my chickens before, but we do prophylactically deworm the dogs and cats when they get their flea medicine so I'm not really opposed to the idea. And with half the flock not laying anyway due to molt the timing couldn't be better.
