[darcyhen]

Hi,

Henrietta has a white substance on her 'bottom'. Before i panic and then stress her out trying to catch her I thought i'd find out if this was normal and whether it will go away on its own or need cleanning.

It's a white substance and it is clinging to her feathers. It's been there for more than a day.  She sometimes lays a soft egg and there can be albumen around but it's not normally white.

We also have a new cockerel and he has only just started to tread the girls. Could he have 'missed'?

My gut feel is to give her a clean and check her out but as i said i'll have to chase her and she may get stressed.


Thanks

Michelle

[karlooben]

hi there i wish i could answer this for you but i cant , can u not just get her into a corner an trap her somehow i have had to try that with one of my pol whos very nervous thing is she flew that high  she got though the top of the quantine fencing an back into the main pen  and that was 7 foot high .

[Aunt Sally]

It's just urates (wee) nothing to worry too much about.  She might be eating rather a lot of protein just now (which will increase the amount of urates) as there are a lot of insects and spiders around just now.  You can give her knickers a wash if you want to 

[karlooben]

  thats one  way of putting it . but also this could answer a probelm of one of my girls tonight who seemed very down and her wings were drooping , she went and hid in the darkest corner of the house under a bit of wood i use for covering the nest boxes an she was getting picked on badly so i moved her in the quantine house where she can be quiet but as i picked her up watery fluid came out of her which was not poo so maybe that could of been urine but to be on the safe side i have given her antiboitics in the water which she was drinking quite a bit of although i cant tell if shes eating or not .

[darcyhen]

Thanks. My husband has seen a lot of liquid come out before. they do eat a lot of worms, especially if we are out digging the garden. sometimes i think we shall have no worms left!
it hasn't rained here for ages and all of my chickens are drinking lots of water. I am assuming that it's normal as they are not getting raindrops etc off the vegetation.

She's also doing quite a few shell-less eggs. Is that related? I thought it was because she wasn't eating the oyster grit - I'm going to buy a smaller size next time.

She's very happy otherwise so i am not worrying - much!

Michelle