Weird chicken poop?

[sophiaw00]

As I was out with my chickens today I found this strange pile of poo in their run. I may just be paranoid but it doesn't look like normal chicken poop to me. It looks & feels like a hard but thin black plastic. I didn't touch it with my hands but I did poke at it with a stick to see if it was hard or not. Inside is a nasty gooey substance which looks more normal to me.

All the chickens are acting normal - eating, laying, drinking, foraging, etc. I'm just a bit worried that this is something I should be concerned about. All the girls are 25 weeks and my rooster is a year.

ETA: it is also a pretty large pile. could this just be from the poop "baking" in the sun?

 

[CindaLouWho]

Do they get a lot of table scraps?
An earlier post on the forum listed a possible cause of tarry poo as "Oily" from table scraps.

 

[sophiaw00]

They don't get table scraps often, but when they do they tend to get a lot all at once. I gave them scrambled eggs and bread a few days ago, but that's it. It was 2 scrambled eggs and 2 end pieces of bread so it really wasn't that much split between the 10 of them.

Today we had an abundance of vegies/fruits going bad in our fridge so I gave them 2 large carrots, about 1/4 a cup of pineapple, half an apple core (seeds removed), an end piece of bread, some lettuce and a few shreds of red cabbage. This was split between my 10 chickens and the neighbor's 2 pullets.

Is that what is causing it and should I stop feeding them scraps?

 

[aart]

Looks like ti could be a 'baked in the sun' scenario to me.
Nothing wrong with some table scraps, as long as the volume doesn't exceed about 10% of their regular balanced chicken ration.
What they eat can change their droppings, just like any other animal.

Lots of different 'normal' poops....here's some examples, don't jump to disease conclusions tho.
Just observe a lot and you'll get to know what's what.
http://www.the-chicken-chick.com/2012/02/whats-scoop-on-chicken-poop-digestive.html
http://chat.allotment-garden.org/?topic=17568.0