Alas, a week has come and gone with those little chickypoos! And poo they do! Once upon a time I worked at a veterinary clinic and we hosted a number of baby animals. This, in most people’s minds might sound like a dream, in part yes, it was. However, baby animals means lots and lots of poo, everywhere, with no regard for feed or water dishes or each other. I was paid the big bucks to clean it, wherever it lay. Poo just happens, and babies of all sorts do it.
Hopefully I haven’t grossed you all out just yet, because this post is actually all about poop. There will be some icky pictures along the way, so I’m warning you with the weak stomach in back! So prepare yourself (or don’t continue).
The topic at hand is a condition called “Pasty Butt.” Why is this a big enough deal to write about? Pasty butt is a life threatening condition. In chickens, there is one hole that they use for defecating, egg laying, mating, and whatever else that they’d like to use that for....anyway....this hole is called the cloacal vent. When chicks are in their first few days on this brilliant earth, their mama’s make sure that their vent stays clear of debris. Sadly, their mama is not here to do that and thus some of their little bottoms became sealed or “pasted” closed. If you’re exit was sealed up, you can imagine the sort of health problems you would then endure. And so, we searched the internet (as all good kids of our generation do) for a reliable source (or 10 sources with matching information in my case) to tell us how to handle this situation. Thank you to all of those sources that helped us out here!
So here’s what we did. First off, we had to prep our kitchen counter. This mainly consisted of doing the household chores we’d been putting off the past couple of days (cleaning dishes, putting them away, blah blah blah...). Next I put a couple of small towels into the dryer to warm them up for the chicks post butt cleaning. We grabbed an old cardboard box to put them in after they were done, and a cat carrier for the transport from the barn to the kitchen. And then we were off!
We collected all the chicks that looked like they had pasty butt and put them into the cat carrier, there were about 15.
Off they went on a great adventure.
Then came the assembly line of sorts where Adam so graciously took the job of cleaning their poo covered bottoms and I dried them off!
The picture we have of our pasty butt does not do some of these chicks’ condition justice, but once we got in a groove with it, we didn’t think to stop for more pictures. Here is a poor example of pasty butt:
That little brown schmear is also covering this little one’s vent. And so, Adam got to work, gently, using warm water and soap on their bottoms to clear their vents.
The chicks were surprisingly calm during the process. (And yes, we used old socks for the job, why not?) As Adam cleaned their bottoms I was busy worrying about getting them dry and warm. Luckily for us, we discovered that the counter light gets quite hot and so we turned that baby on and put the “clean” chick box underneath it with the warm towels.
You can see the box in the background looking all warm and snug! And so I dried them off as best as I could, being gentle of course. The next step, however, was not into the safety of the warm box. Multiple sources had cited putting some vaseline or olive oil on their vent to help lubricate it, aiding to the defecation process. We don’t have any vaseline so we used olive oil.
We felt using Q-tip would be the easiest way to handle this part. And it proved effective.
Look at them all, clean and trying to get warm!
So that is how we cleaned the Pasty Butts. My next thought was, “Is there any way to prevent this?” There are many ideas that were tossed around out there, but the one we chose to go with was adding Apple Cider Vinegar to their waterers. Adam worked out the proper dilution in his head (he says what he’s doing aloud, but truthfully, math and me aren’t friends so I listen but can rarely follow) and we added the appropriate amount to the water containers.
A special note here: Do not use vinegar in metal containers; plastic or stainless steel only! Vinegar can be pretty harsh stuff, and will erode the metal causing it to rust. Nobody wants to be drinking rusty water.
In case you weren’t sure what the bottle looks like, that’s it. Vinegar, in my humble opinion, is a gift to the world. It is so simple, yet is remedy to many things in life. A moment to thank vinegar for existing.
I’m happy to report that since cleaning/clearing the vents and adding the ACV to the water, they seem to be doing quite well, growing rapidly, and pooing in great abundance. Yay baby animals!
janainaart
baratheonpilled
areudirty
annaxmalina
origamiaround
prguitarman
kaledo-art
blakekathryn