Caring For Baby Chicks with Pasty Butt
When You Order Baby Chicks Online, Be Prepared To Treat This Common Condition
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Chick season will soon be in full swing. If you are new to having backyard chickens and just starting out caring for baby chicks, you should be aware of a potentially life-threatening, but easily treatable condition that is fairly common, affecting mainly shipped day-old chicks. It is known as “Pasty Butt.”
Pasty Butt is a condition in which feces get stuck in the baby chick’s vent and literally stop up the chick so it can’t excrete its poop. It can kill the chick fairly quickly if not treated immediately, so knowing how to treat this condition is an important part of caring for baby chicks.
Pasty Butt is usually caused by stress or extreme temperature changes, such as those often endured by baby chicks during the rigorous travel from the hatchery to your post office. Shipped chicks are far more susceptible to Pasty Butt than those you purchase from a local farm or hatch yourself, but it’s good practice when caring for baby chicks to get into the habit of checking all your newly hatched or acquired chicks for it. Of all the sick chicken symptoms you might encounter when caring for baby chicks, Pasty Butt is one of the easiest to treat.
Pasty Butt Treatment – Once you get your chicks home, check each chick one by one for Pasty Butt and gently swab any poop stuck on their vents with a cotton swab moistened with warm water or warmed vegetable or olive oil and then smear a bit of oil around the vent area. Continue to check their little butts for the first few days for pasting up; several times a day if you have any chicks currently suffering from Pasty Butt, and continue to swab to keep the vent area nice and clean. Since chicks are not able to regulate their body temperature and can chill easily and die, you don’t want to wet any more of the chick than necessary; just remove any stuck on feces. That’s why I recommend using a cotton swab which greatly reduces the area actually moistened.
Pasty Butt Prevention – Feeding the chicks a bit of cornmeal or ground raw oatmeal mixed into their regular chick feed can help prevent and/or clear up Pasty Butt. Be sure and provide chick-sized grit if you feed your chicks anything other than chick feed. Chicks are extremely susceptible to diarrhea, which can exacerbate Pasty Butt symptoms, so be sure to keep the bedding dry and change out wet litter that might be harboring e.coli or other bacteria. Probiotic powder mixed into their feed can help balance the good-to-bad bacteria ratio in their intestinal tract and help prevent diarrhea.
Knowing how to treat Pasty Butt is an important part of learning how to raise baby chicks. Hopefully, you won’t encounter Pasty Butt in your new baby chicks, but if you do, you’ll know exactly how to treat it.
Originally published in 2014 and regularly vetted for accuracy.
I’ve intentionally bought 3 buff Brahma. chicks with pasty butt, got them at half price. Took home, carefully cleaned them off and still have 2 (1 rooster, 1 hen). The 3rd, a rooster somehow got under a coop and died when while we were away for a long weekend. My larger coops are enclosed underneath so I couldn’t figure out how he got under there. My gut told me to check under them. Neighbor was caring for them and with over 60 chickens, didn’t notice 1 missing. I see it constantly at one farm supply company who get their chicks from Hoovers Hatchery, some shipments had 10-15% with pasty butt. Summer shipments seem to have more cases then cool/cold weather ones.