Health Issues with Chickens

 How to Treat Chickens for Pasty Butt a Foot Infection and Mites

How to treat chickens

    As with all animals, chickens can have health problems. Our chickens have had both normal, and bizarre health problems. Our first problem was pasty butt, which I talked about in another blog post, but, why not talk about it again? Our second problem was a weird foot infection. Then our chicken’s latest health issue was feather mites.

    Pasty butt is actually dried feces that is blocking the chicken’s vent. This normally happens with chicks, but it can happen to adult chickens, too. This problem has the easiest, most instantaneous cure, the cure is a simple wet rag. Take the wet rag and dab at and gently rub the chick’s vent where the dried feces is, this will soften the dried feces and eventually remove it. When one of our chicks got it, we caught it, either the day after it happened or the same day, because she wasn’t in any sort of discomfort. It took us 20 minutes or so to clean her up, and our little chick was good to go.

    The severest, most alarming issue, we noticed on December 29^th 2022. We saw that one of our chickens was just hanging around in corners of the coop, being pecked at by the other chickens, and generally lethargic, all of which are not good signs. So we brought her out of the coop, away from the other chickens so we could inspect her. Upon inspection, we found her right foot was very swollen from an infection and the left one had a slight infection.

 

Bathing the chickens infected foot

    Not knowing what to do with it, we gave her a small mound of corn to occupy her while we did some Googling to figure out how to treat her. After some research, we came to the conclusion that to treat her, we had to soak her feet in a warm water bath with Epsom salts and lavender essential oil everyday for about 15 minutes. After the bath, we would tell her to “put your foot out” then we would rinse her foot off with hydrogen peroxide, then dry her feet, put some triple antibiotic ointment on, then release her into the coop again. After a couple days of doing this, she began extending her foot towards us when we said to. That shows you chickens are smart, not bird brains as some people would make you think!

    After about two weeks of treatment, the chicken began walking around more, and going down into the run. The places where the infection had oozed out was scabbed over by late February, and fell off in March. Our treatment worked, the chicken didn’t die, though she did lose some of her toes on the infected foot.

    Many sources on the internet told us that we had to segregate her from the others by putting her in a clean cage with fresh shavings. The reason many say to do that, is so the other chickens don't peck at her, and the fresh shavings keep the wound clean. The problem was, we had no means in which to do that, so we just kept her with the rest of the flock.

    Our current, on-going problem is feather mites. Feather mites break the chicken’s feathers at the base, then burrow into the hollow part of the feather. The solution is fairly straight forward. Mix, in a spray bottle, two tablespoons rubbing alcohol, 10 drops of lavender essential oil, and fill the bottle the rest of the way with distilled white vinegar. Spray this mixture on the chickens everyday until the feathers grow back.

    It is extremely important to keep an eye on you flock, and look for abnormal behavior. Its best to catch problems early, before they cause serious problems. Keep your chickens happy and healthy, and they will serve you well for years.

 

  ***Disclosure: This post includes affiliate links, and I may earn a commission for purchases made through these links. Rest assured, this commission incurs no additional cost to you. Furthermore, I only endorse products and services that align with my genuine beliefs.