Watery poo

[azygous]

I brought four two-day old hatchery chicks home last week, (five days old now) and from the start, one or two have had very watery poo. This isn't the first batch of chicks I've raised, and I haven't experience such watery consistency in poo from youngsters before.

They are otherwise normal. Active, eating well, drinking, and sleeping at regular intervals. None appears to be lethargic.

They're getting medicated chick starter, and water with vitamins added, with a drop of ACV.

Is this something I need to be alarmed about? What can I do about it?

 

[dianaross77]

Oh the many kinds of poo. I tried my best to get this link put in a sticky but to no avail. Here is a chart of chicken poo.

http://www.chat.allotment.org.uk/index.php?topic=17568.0

 

[azygous]

I'm familiar with that poo chart. And then there's several years' worth of raking up chicken poo from the older ones. This is baby poo, kind of yellow, and very watery. Maybe it's that they're drinking a lot of water? They let me know that the normal 95 degrees for a first week brooder was too warm, so they're at a balmy 80-85 and acting like it's optimal. So they can't be too hot.

Maybe I worry too much.

 

[lroth217]

In my opinion, I would take the ACV and the vitamins out of the water for now. They should have all they need in their feed and you don't want to overload their systems with vitamins they don't need.


Electrolytes like Sav-a-Chick or Quik Chik would be okay in the water for about a week then I would watch and see if their poo gets more solid and then stop that too. Maybe add it to their water once a week for a few more weeks after that. Usually the electrolytes are to help with shipping stress and since yours weren't shipped it probably isn't necessary, but with the watery poo it might not be a bad idea.