Watery poops in chicks...a reason to worry?

Skye'sDucks

Crowing
5 Years
May 13, 2018
937
1,981
276
The 'too much sunshine' sunshine state
I feel like I'm over worrying yet again, but my mom and I are first-time chicken owners (although I used to have a flock of ducks and we've both done a ton of research on chicks as well) so I'm not panicking or anything.

We have four 6 day old chicks, all different breeds, and have noticed today there are these dark, watery poops in their brooder. We've had them since Tuesday. I've been researching online about coccidiosis and watery poops in general and am not seeing anything like these. Perhaps I am not researching hard enough or my chicks are just trying to stress me out. 😅

I have attached some photos below and would like to ask: is this a reason to worry? Is it a symptom of something? I have info below to help answer as many questions as I think might be asked:

The only chick I have seen with any kind of 'residue' on her butt is our australorp; it's not pasty butt or messy enough to clean, but one or two tiny clumps of fluff that obviously got wet from said poops. My mom claims she saw our red star chick do a watery poo, but she has nothing on her butt.
All chicks are alert, active, drinking and eating, have full crops, cleaning and preening themselves, and being normal chicks with plenty of normal poops in the brooder as well.
They are on backyard feed brand chick feed, non medicated and 20% protein, and the first day we had them offered probiotic and electrolytes in their water. They've had fresh water every day since. I have yet to do a deep clean of their brooder since we haven't even had them for a full week but I am planning to do so tomorrow. I have cleaned their brooder thoroughly however and have kept on top of it.
We live in Florida and temps have been in the 80s/90s and we have them on our (screened in) porch in full shade with a heat lamp over only a portion of the brooder like it should be. They go in the garage at night since they are close to my parents' bedroom and my dad can somehow hear their little peeps and it'll keep him up.

The australorp who is currently my suspect (I'm keeping an eye on all, but especially the red star as well as the australorp because of my mom's observation) is being completely normal as mentioned above. The only thing I saw tonight is that as they were sleeping, she and the red star were the only ones sleeping with their necks stretched out. They'd get up and move around and preen when I disturbed them to do one more check a little bit ago and didn't seem to automatically go back to that position. I'm presuming this is normal but thought I'd mention since I didn't see the other two chicks do it.

I have attached pics of two different poops and also the chicks with their necks stretched out--the black one and the one in the corner (reddish/rusty color) are the austalorp and red star respectively.

Thanks for any help!
 

Attachments

  • 20210828_203732.jpg
    20210828_203732.jpg
    215.3 KB · Views: 55
  • 20210828_203534.jpg
    20210828_203534.jpg
    186.7 KB · Views: 22
  • 20210828_203600.jpg
    20210828_203600.jpg
    294.2 KB · Views: 22
The most common cause of watery poop in baby chicks is overheating. It causes them to consume more water than they normally would. So the poops come out watery because of all the water they're drinking.

At your daytime temps of 80-90, no heat is required during the day. You would only need to provide them the option of heat at night as they will lose body heat while they are not consuming calories.

A heat lamp on all night is not conducive to sleep. So baby chicks may become active during the night since they wake up and find they can see, so they chatter and eat and sometimes have wild parties while the humans are trying to get some sleep. Heat lamps have become relics of chick brooding past. There are much better ways of providing heat to chicks that permit them to get a natural night's sleep as they should, and their humans also sleep much better, as a result. Check this out for starters. https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...d-in-the-brooder-picture-heavy-update.956958/
 
The most common cause of watery poop in baby chicks is overheating. It causes them to consume more water than they normally would. So the poops come out watery because of all the water they're drinking.

At your daytime temps of 80-90, no heat is required during the day. You would only need to provide them the option of heat at night as they will lose body heat while they are not consuming calories.

A heat lamp on all night is not conducive to sleep. So baby chicks may become active during the night since they wake up and find they can see, so they chatter and eat and sometimes have wild parties while the humans are trying to get some sleep. Heat lamps have become relics of chick brooding past. There are much better ways of providing heat to chicks that permit them to get a natural night's sleep as they should, and their humans also sleep much better, as a result. Check this out for starters. https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...d-in-the-brooder-picture-heavy-update.956958/
I'm so sorry for not getting back to you--I've just been busy and have had a couple of crazy days. I did take away the heat lamp like you suggested and only offer it at night (and once the other day when it was raining and had cooled down a lot) and the watery poops have stopped, so thank you very much for the help.

I had read about that about heat lamps, and my mom actually has this heat lamp where it doesn't give off light, just heat. I don't know what it is or if it's technically proper to use for chicks, but it seems to be working fine.
I was going to make one of those heating pad caves, but for some reason it never happened. I let life get in the way, and my mom has her own ideas of what she wanted to do too so I kind of ended up deferring to her choice instead of mine.
Poop looks like a cecal poop.
How big is that bin?
That was the one thing I wondered about, but when I looked at examples of cecal poops online it didn't look exactly the same so I decided to ask here to be sure. Like I was saying above, taking away the heat lamp during the days seems to have stopped the really water poos, but I believe I have been seeing cecal poos now since my chicks have stayed completely healthy and normal.
The bin is 50 gal and we have four chicks.
 

New posts New threads Active threads

Back
Top Bottom