Checking in on the Chicks

When you raise chickens, the sight you see below is not what you want to find when you feed and water the birds.

Another one bites the dust...

We have lost a total of three chicks - all of them being the Cornish Cross meat birds. We don't exactly know why they died.  One thing I noticed, though, on the Rhode Island Red birds was that some of them had "Pasty Butt."  Pasty butt is an ailment that chicks get that is essentially diarrhea.  It becomes a serious and often fatal issue, because the poop sticks to them and will actually stop up their vents.  Here is a picture of a chick with pasty butt.  It is not a pretty sight to behold.

Pasty butt can be caused by several things:

1. Stress from being shipped through the mail - our chicks were shipped,
2. Getting too cold - our chicks may have gotten cold as it was cold when they first arrived,
3. Getting too hot - the heat lamps may have gotten the birds too hot,
4. An infection - the birds could have picked up an infection.

The birds must be treated to avoid death.  Two treatments are to either hold the little chick's butt under warm running water or use oil on a Q-tip to remove the poop from their vents.  It was pretty cold on this particular evening and bringing the affected chicks inside for warm baths and blow-drying wasn't the option I went for.  Instead, I used some vegetable oil on a q-tip to remove the poop and lubricate the vent area.

The next photo is not a pretty one, but chicken raising can be nasty business and sometimes it involves dirty work that I'd rather not do.  But I'd also rather not have our chicks dying on us.

I worked on the four or five chicks that were affected and removed the poop from the vent area.  We also added a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar to each gallon of water we put in the chicks' waterers.  This happened a week ago and we have not lost any more chicks! This is good news.  We will keep monitoring the situation, but for now the birds appear to be once again healthy and growing.

Pasty Butt

We've experienced a little problem with our chicks.  Last week we had 60 meat birds shipped to us. The day old birds arrived all healthy with only one dead.  Then sickness swept through the fledgling flock of feathered fowl.  We began losing chicks.  Darn it!  Tricia did some research and diagnosed the problem - Pasty Butt.

That doesn't sound nice.  What happens is that the chicks get diarrhea and the poop gets caught in the down that is around their butts.  That poop clogs up their vent (butt), and causes a blockage and they die.  Who knew?  Chickens get constipation that is fatal.  So what are the causes?  Well, it can be caused by stress, by the chicks getting too cold when shipped through the mail, or with the chicks getting too warm under the heat lamps in the brooder.  Or it can be caused by viral/bacterial infections.  The latter, we think, is the culprit.  The chicks are comfortable in the brooder.  If they were too cold, they would be piled up in a bunch to try to stay warm.  If they were too hot, they would be away from the lamp.  The chicks are evenly dispersed and seem to be happy with the temperature.

Pasty Butt

So what can you do to combat pasty butt?  Well, you can wipe their "business end" with a Q-tip moistened with water/oil.  That will unplug things.  You can hold their bottom under running warm water and then blow dry them.

To combat the infection by helping their immune system, you can mix a little apple cider vinegar in their drinking water.  The recipe Tricia found online calls for 1 Tablespoon per gallon.  Our waterers are much smaller, so Tricia used 1/2 teaspoon in our quart sized waterer.  Is there anything Apple Cider Vinegar can't do?

Apple Cider Vinegar - a cure for pasty butt 

To help with the diarrhea, you can feed the chicks ground raw oatmeal with a little grit.  We used sand.  We began this regimen yesterday and today was the first day we didn't lose a chick.  Hopefully Tricia has put an end to the epidemic of Pasty Butt Syndrome that was running rampant in the brooder.

Get well soon, pasty butts

We will continue to keep a close eye on the chicks as we don't want to lose any more birds.  Cleaning birds' bottoms who are afflicted with Pasty Butt is not something that I look forward to.  But I'll check them out tomorrow and, if necessary, I'll do what it takes to save them.