Wet looking backside.

[bulldog-girl]

I have had chickens now for about 6 months. I got most of them as adults. Everyone is usually fine and dandy but I noticed this morning that my White leghorn hens entire backside looked like she had sit in water and looked a little red. It also looked like she had whte poo onher backside. Unfortunalty she is not very tame and I had to go to work so I just watched her. I threw out some bread and she ate and drank. She appears to be acting normally.

Since I have never seen this I am wondering if I should be watching our for anything. Usually the girlies are clean on their bums. I do have medicine to treat Cocci. I have not noticed any bloody or odd poo either.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[bulldog-girl]

Sorry to bump but I am getting ready to go home from work and see how the wet butt chicken is. No ideas anyone?

Thanks

 

[SweetMissDaisy]

Hi,
Do a search on the forum for internal layer and Peritonitis. You might even google Egg Yolk Peritonitis. Look for photos, and see if it resembles your hen's condition.

Hopefully that's not her issue, as it's not usually a very easy condition to recover from.

 

[caralouise1974]

My bluebelle has been like this ever since she started laying a month ago (see my other thread - Bella been to vets...etc) and I'm still trying to get her sorted out.

She lays a lot of soft shelled eggs, which break underneath/inside her and leave her all messy. She has a clear discharge from her vent for a couple of hours after laying, which we think must be the remnants of a previous egg white coming out after breaking inside her. She skin around her bottom is red and sore from being constantly damp. She dustbathes herself and preens meticulously every day to get clean, but by the next morning after laying, she's back to square one.

She has also suffered from binding (symptoms: very swollen tummy, cannot poop, tail right up in the air, slow and lethargic, straining) and had to go to the vet for massage to get the stuck soft shelled egg out (which had two more soft shells backed-up behind it which she passed on the examination table). We are considering a hysterectomy if it continues, as there's a high risk she'll have more eggs break inside her, which usually leads to peritonitis and is nearly always fatal.

We feel so powerless to help her, it's heartbreaking. At the moment our vet has her on very strong calcium supplements (called Nutrobal) and we've restricted her diet to grass and layers pellets only (no treats of any kind), in the vain hope that it might simply turn out to be a nutritional imbalance. We're not hugely hopeful though...

I really hope your girl has simply sat in a soft shell after laying it, and it ends up being a one-off. And that is of course rather more likely than the situation I've described above, so please don't take the sotry above to be the gospel of the harbinger of doom.

 

[bulldog-girl]

Thanks for all the input. We still have the wet butt problem. It appears to be dripping poo like she cannot control it. She eats fine, has been laying eggs that have regular shells, although she is not laying as frequently, and she acts pretty normal except she is picking at her backside so some of her feathers are now missing. I can't tell if she picked at her vent and now it is injured? I did worm them and also treat them all with selmet.

Unfortunatly, she is a leghorn and is not tame. I could try and catch her at night and seperate her. I thought about washing her backside to see if I can clear away the mess and see what could be causing the problem. Could mites do this?

It is just so weird that she is behaving normaly except for the butt issue.

 

[SweetMissDaisy]

Are you sure she's laying? Could it be eggs from other hens you're gathering?
And are the eggs regularly shaped, or are they irregular?

 

[Wynette]

IMO for both of these cases, I would separate the hen and I would not feed layer feed. Laying takes a tremendous amount of energy on their part, and you really want them to be able to focus their energy on getting well. To discourage laying, put them in a darker area (I use a dog crate and put them in my garage, which gets a bit of natural sunlight from very small windows up high, but not much) and feed them a flock feed such as Purina's Flock Raiser. Egg laying issues are just so heartbreaking. Because of this, I have begun to feed my juvenile pullets a different blend of feed that is formulated to delay sexual maturity, thus alleviating future egg-laying problems that could potentially be caused by the pullet maturing too quickly.

I wish you both the BEST of luck with your girls, and hope they are feeling better soon!