Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

Corn time for the poultry is a perfect opportunity to inspect bottoms!!! And strange as that may sound, it's quite an important part of looking after the birds. In the same way that runny noses are a sign of ill-health in chickens, turkeys, etc a mucky back end is too!!! Amongst other problems, mucky back ends CAN suggest trouble with intestinal (inside the tummy) worms.
Worms can lead to problems for poultry in the same way they can in goats, sheep and alpacas in that if they end up in the digestive system they can cause the bird to lose weight, have diarrhoea and even block the whole gut (stomach or belly). It is crucial that the birds' droppings are also checked regularly as if there is a worm problem, sloppy poo of the wrong colour will be seen and this is usually 'before' the back end starts to get too mucky. Having said that, some birds who are more feathery than others (such as Orpingtons and Silkies), tend to get mucky back ends more easily as they have a lot more feathers that the poo can stick to, so these birds should be checked more often. If a worming problem is suspected, medication can be given: medication can also be given to 'prevent' a worming problem...
There are however various ways of trying to stop your birds getting worms in the first place. The first is to keep houses and paddocks as clean as possible. As with the goats and sheep, worm eggs are found in the poo and if these end up back inside the bird, the eggs will hatch into new worms and then live inside the bird. We clean our poultry houses every day and also rake the paddocks to help spread out the poo. Keeping the grass short also helps as worms eggs are destroyed by ultraviolet light (UV) from the sun. As our alpacas graze in the poultry area, our grass is always short - perfect!!
And did you know, that when poultry poo, they are actually pooing and weeing at the same time - the black part of the dropping is the poo and there is also a white part that is the wee - how very clever of them to do both at once!!!
And you can see from the photo we have very clean bottoms at the moment - hooray!! We tend to give a worming medication to the birds twice a year - usually in the spring and early autumn BUT if we think we have problems we might do it more often. We also put apple cider vinegar in the poultry water every few weeks and that can help with stopping worms as the worms are not meant to like living in a stomach with vinegar in it!!! Cannot blame them!!!