Week Old Chick with Swollen Vent

LittleCinna

Hatching
Apr 4, 2021
6
1
9
Hi all!
I am hoping to get so wisdom on what to do with a 6 day old chick with a swollen vent. Google has been no help and I’ve never dealt with this.

This chick had mild pasty butt develop less than 24 hrs after I brought her home that I easily treated for 2 days with warm compresses. Yesterday, I was happy with her progress so decided to skip any treatment for the day. Today, I noticed that she was missing feathers around her vent and the vent itself looked slightly swollen. I observed her for a bit and realized she’s obsessively grooming around her vent area. I don’t know how to make her stop harming herself and to make her vent less swollen. She is eating and drinking normal, running around with the others, and is having normal to slightly soft bowel movements light to medium brown in color (have seen her have multiple today). I could isolate her, but honestly I haven’t seen another chick bother her at all. Just herself.

No other chicks have had pasty butt or any other issues. They’re on a medicated chick starter crumble with chick grit with the probiotics in it.

Attached are pictures from tonight where it looks slightly worse than this morning. The first is how it looks without me pulling back the feathers. The second is with the feathers pulled back.
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Poor baby! maybe her vent hurts? can anyone help!?
Thank you. That’s what I am wondering, if it’s painful or itchy even. I was able to find some things on a prolapsed vent, but I don’t know if that is what it is entirely since it doesn’t look NEARLY as bad as some of those photos. 😬😬 I also don’t want to mess with it more and irritate it further without a direct course of what to do. Honestly, I believe it wouldn’t look so bad if I could get the poor girl to leave it alone. Too bad there isn’t a chick e-collar! 😂
 
I have had 2 chicks with this exact same problem, both had pasty but for the first week, in my opinion it is their vent getting irritated and swelling up from the pasty but and also from them trying to clean it since they hate having dirty vents so they will obsessively try picking/ cleaning it which only irritates it more since they have sharp little beaks. Both of my chicks were much smaller then the rest and would cry real loud every time they pooped. It was terrible to hear, luckily with my first chick it cleared up on it's own right around a week old as she got older she got stronger and after 5 weeks she was one of the biggest out of that bunch and never showed another sign of any problem. The second one I am still dealing with since I still have it now, it will be a week old tomorrow and still has a swollen vent and cries everytime it poops, It has a bit more runny poop then the rest so I have to keep cleaning it throughout the day. I think it first gets caused by them straining to poop when they have pasty but, since it clogs up they strain and it first gets irritated and then goes from there. If it doesn't clear up or start to get much, much better after 1 week then I would worry but not until then, just keep it clean as possible, I dabbed a tiny bit of warm coconut oil around the vent and that seemed to work wonders in helping it heal and also made the poo easier to clean off as well. Sorry for the long thread but hope this helps you since it sounds like you're going through the same exact thing.
 

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