Treating Pasty Butt – Naturally!

And just when you think you’re off butt wiping duty, you open the chicken coop door and there’s a bunch of raw poultry rears gazing up at the stars.

Here’s my disclaimer: Visuals ahead may be graphic, proceed with caution. There, I covered my bases.

Good grief, a days work for a mother is never over is it? We’ve had our chicks (Broilers- meat birds, & Pullets- egg layers) for 3 weeks. We’ve had laying hens in the past and they seemed pretty low maintenance- so this situation is possibly due to my naive chicken farmer self.

I noticed quite a few birds had no feathers on their bottoms, they were bare and swollen like a balloon-ONLY ON THE MEAT BIRDS. The broiler chics and the laying hens are all the same age, yet true to their character the broilers are growing much much faster. Their fast growth rate packs on the pounds faster than the chicks can build up their leg muscles which results in them just being down right lazy and pooping while laying down.

The chicks looked wet. Sick. Not to mention loosing their feathers alone made them look like a walking horror story where these mangy one eyed birds attack you. I wasn’t counting, but I know was finding one not well each morning when I opened the coop door. Jumped on trusty google. After self diagnosing we had a case of, “The Pasty Butt.”

What’s Pasty Butt?

This is a condition where droppings stick to a chick’s vent area, preventing them from ya know, pooping. The condition is easily treated with rubber gloves and some apple cider vinegar.

CAUSES:

The biggest cause of this issue is due to poorly digestible ingredients.

-Stay with me here people!-

Ingredients that are poorly digested cause the digesta in the intestine to get thicker or more viscous, which makes it stickier aka sticks to the back end of the bird. The bird’s own digestive enzymes aren’t being produced in enough quantity to break down feed.

This is why the issue typically clears itself around 10 days of age. Yeahhh, not so much for us. (After 10 days the chicks are acclimated to the feed and producing their own digestive enzymes to process the feed and the vent is getting larger.

Additional reasons for pasting may include:

• Shipping or transport
• Temperature extremes, hot or cold
• Acclimation to solid food to solid food from the yolk while inside the egg

How to cure Pasty Butt.

These are called saving a chick not glamor shots just FYI!

1. Examine the vent: Baby chicks have a bellybutton that is located close to the vent; the vent is just below the tail, while the belly button (navel) is further down towards the belly and legs.
2. Clean the vent: If you determine the chick is pasting, use a warm, wet wash cloth to help remove the material. When the manure is softened, softly use a cotton swab in a downward motion to help remove the material. Do not attempt to pull off dried manure from the vent, as you will risk tearing the skin and feathers. Young chicks are easily chilled, so it is important to minimize the area of the bird that gets wet. If it’s really stuck, use vegetable oil to loosen it off.
3. Dry the chick: Use a clean, soft towel to remove excess water. Keeping the chicks warm is important because young chicks are not quite able to regulate their body temperature and are at a high risk of chill when wet. A chill could bring on another round of pasting.

Annddd once you get the pipes unclogged, forewarning, it may really be a load!

Preventing PB:

I bedded the bottom of the coop with these wood pellets that break down and dissolve into saw dust as they come in contact with moisture. They work amazing in our dog kennels https://www.copperbfarmsaussies.com and have saved us a lot of money on bedding- however it was challenging to keep the bedding dry for chickens since they are pooping literally everywhere and not in just one corner, etc. This was raising some real hell in the coop keeping them dry.

Chicks + moisture = disaster.

STEP 1:
Clean out the coop. Wet litter is the host of bacteria and moisture out of there. Re-bed with pine wood shavings.

STEP 2:
-Add a heat lamp – MORE HEAT!
Chicks within the first week need their environment to be around 80-95°, after that start dropping the temp by 5 degrees each week. Our temp in Minnesota went from being 45° to 15° within a weeks time. I now have 3 heat lamps in and lowered them closer to the ground.

-RED BULBS
I replaced our white heat lamp bulbs with 250-Watt Red Brooder bulbs. Chickens have a cannibalistic traits. It’s unattractive but whatever, they literally walk around and pluck each other to death once they start seeing blood. With brains the size of a fingernail, setting the mood with red lighting to match the blood actually makes the blood look invisible to them so they stop pecking. CRAZY!

STEP 3:
Add a little natural apple cider vinegar in their drinking water. ACV is good for gut health by attacking bad bacteria in the digestive track.

STEP 4:
Add cornmeal or ground oatmeal to the feed ration. We feed starter to our chicks, it is ground up enough that grit is not necessary. Sprinkle a cup into their feed everyday to add fiber for smoother digestion.

There ya have it folks- best of endeavors to you & your poopy chicken clan!