Poop Post

I'm going to guess that 99% of my readers will not want to hear about or see pictures of chicken poop. But I have just gone through an ordeal, and I wish I had known this stuff, so I am posting about it anyway. If you don't want to see gross poop pictures, skip this post.

Our buff orpington was sick about a week and a half ago. I immediately treated her with Corid, a drug for coccidiosis. She responded well and within 3 days was back to normal. No one else showed signs of illness, except every morning I would find bloody poop on the roost. I talked to the man at the feed store, Del, who told me if that continued to switch drugs at the end of the first course. So I did switch drugs. But the bloody feces continued. After 10 days of this I was starting to panic, thinking I had a drug resistant strain and I was going to lose all the chickens. After getting no where by trying to call people and do internet research, I joined the website www.backyardchickens.com This website has so much information, and has a forum for chicken emergencies. I posted my situation along with this picture:

You can see why I was concerned! Several people responded that day and referred me to this poop page. They told me that chickens sometimes shed the lining of their intestines, and that this is normal. My picture matches the last one under "normal" poos. I am SO relieved. What I can't find online is why this is happening so frequently. Do they not have enough grit? Did the sulfa drug I just gave them wipe out their gut bacteria (they are getting yogurt daily for this)? Most chicken owners don't know that this happens - I guess they aren't out inspecting their poop everyday! I still don't know the answer to this, but for now knowing that everyone is going to be okay is good enough for me.

Oh you can see a picture of what coccidiosis poop looks like on the poop page, nothing like what their's looked like. It's quite alarming.