Vent Gleet in Chickens
Learn about vent gleet in chickens and what the vent gleet treatment requires.
Vent gleet in poultry, also known as cloacitis, is one of the many vent problems in chickens that both backyard poultry hobbyists and commercial growers might encounter. Vent gleet can be caused by several ailments, and it’s best to consult a poultry veterinarian to determine the cause and identify the proper cure.
Forms of Vent Gleet in Chickens and Poultry
If you’re searching online, you may find sources that say vent gleet is a fungal infection. However, the condition is more complex than that. Not only do multiple forms of vent gleet exist, but their different etiologies are more or less common in various geographic regions.
“It’s usually a form of discharge from the cloaca or cloacal infection,” says Dr. Donna Kelly, Assistant Professor of Microbiology and poultry veterinarian at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine. Dr. Kelly reports that in the U.S., vent gleet isn’t usually fungal but more often bacterial. “The origins of the discharge are multifactorial in etiology, so it could be hormonal, bacterial, or viral.” She adds that it could be metabolic or nutritional too, and the term “vent gleet” runs the whole gamut of severity from a little cloacal discharge up to significant drainage, feathers caked in white crystals, and fecal mess.
Nutritional Needs
“A lot of backyard chicken-keepers like to feed what we consider kitchen scraps or compostable ingredients,” Dr. Kelly warns. “But, the more fruit and moist vegetables you feed them, the more they’ll have a diarrheal aspect to their fecal consistency.” When diet causes birds to pass a lot of urine and water fecal contents, urine can build up around the vent. As the uric acid concentration gets higher, you may notice white, chalky crystals, known as urate, form. Moreover, when birds are eating too much calcium or too much phosphorus, you could face a gout situation, particularly in older laying hens.
“[This is] commonly seen in the older birds, because they may be developing visceral gout and are passing out more chalky urates,” Dr. Kelly explains. Visceral gout is a metabolic disease resulting from impaired kidney function, followed by an accumulation of urate crystals in various organs.
Vent Gleet and Bronchitis
Dr. Kelly says another cause of vent gleet is a viral infection caused by the bronchitis virus.
“Some strains of this virus can infect the kidneys and will cause them to be polyuric. The chickens will pass out lots of liquid urine as opposed to nice urate-capped feces. And that just causes massive pasting.”
Mites
Birds that have a really bad infestation of northern fowl mites can have a lot of local irritation. The mites will cause a dark black area along feathers, especially at the vent area. You may see the bird’s cloaca blinking — where they evert and invert the cloaca more — which can cause other birds to start pecking at the area, making the vent gleet worse.
Trauma
One typical form of vent gleet Dr. Kelly saw many years ago was in commercial turkeys that had been artificially inseminated.
“When you’re constantly handling those hens and inseminating the area with straws, you’d typically have a little irritation and maybe some inflammatory discharge.” She says it wasn’t too serious and that the birds were just trying to add moisture back to the area and reduce the irritation themselves. If other birds peck at the vent, the wounds can develop a bacterial infection.
Salpingitis
Salpingitis is inflammation or infection of the oviduct. It’s a complex condition in poultry associated with various infections, including Mycoplasma and other bacteria.
“As the infection gets nastier, the hens can develop a smelly, gross, yellowy-green discharge. That’s usually the birds trying to evacuate the infection from the oviduct. They’ll develop a dirty, pasty vent area from that.”
Does Your Chicken Have Vent Gleet?
Due to the variety of causes of vent gleet, it’s best to consult with a veterinarian.
“They’ll do a visual examination and take a swab of the area to see what your organisms are. They might do a stain to see if it’s bacteria, yeast, or fungus. In my experience, [most chickens] haven’t had a fungal disease.” She adds that if the condition is viral, it could take a longer time to diagnose. The vet might do blood or PCR tests to confirm if it’s an infectious bronchitis virus. Blood tests can be taken two weeks after the lesions start. “If you’re having a multiple-birds problem in your flock, it would be best to take infected birds to a diagnostic lab or a veterinarian.”
Luckily, vent gleet is mostly a single bird issue. If what you’re facing seems to be a whole-flock issue, your flock might have mites or infectious bronchitis. If a bird has mites, you’d see black flecks moving around the vent area, and these can also get on people. “They’ll crawl all over you and make you itch,” Dr. Kelly warns of mites. “So, you need to watch out if you’re handling the birds. You can bring them into your house, and they may set up in corners or find their way to other birds.”
Dr. Kelly says it’s important to get a proper diagnosis, because there are so many causes for vent gleet that you don’t want to treat for the wrong one. “If they aren’t responding to therapy, it’s because it’s the wrong cause,” she says. Antifungals won’t work for a bacterial infection, mite infestation, or renal failure. Proper etiology is crucial.
Vent Gleet Treatment
Once again, it’s important when researching treatment for vent gleet that you’re sourcing the information from the correct country. A lot of vent gleet information on the internet currently comes from Europe or Australia, where they use medicines not approved by the FDA in the United States. Even if you keep animals just for family use, and you aren’t selling eggs, it’s important to follow what’s safe and legal. You need to avoid allergic reactions in your family.
Advice gleaned from blogs or social media groups should be viewed with a lot of caution. “They might be treated without veterinary oversight, so you need to make sure that you’re following the proper recommendations and guidelines,” Dr. Kelly warns. “If birds have vent gleet due to uncomplicated infectious bronchitis, there’s nothing we can do about it other than just keep the area clean and dry and wait until the virus clears the body.”
If vent gleet is caused by northern fowl mites, then a veterinarian can treat it with medication. Keep in mind you’ll have limitations around what you can use for treating food-producing animals. For bacterial infections, Dr. Kelly says the birds sometimes respond to tetracycline, which now requires a veterinary prescription for poultry in the U.S.
Home Remedies
Apple cider vinegar sometimes helps clear up any diarrheal disease and tightens up the gut, which decreases the amount of wet, watery diarrhea. When adding apple cider vinegar to chickens’ water, use one teaspoon per gallon and make it the only water option for the flock. It should be remade fresh daily.
The internet might steer you toward molasses water treatments. Dr. Kelly doesn’t approve of these because they usually cause more diarrhea. “You give them this sugary product and then it pulls all the water into the intestinal tract.”
“You can get avian probiotics [such as yogurt], which are usually in powder form. There’s also some chicken probiotics specifically designed from the chicken intestinal flora.” For the avian probiotics, either top-dress their feed or add it to their water. If adding it to the water, it’s important to clean the bowl often, as it could develop a biofilm, which tends to collect other nasty organisms.
Another home remedy offered on the internet is bathing the birds and trimming feathers around the vent area. “I usually don’t like to bathe chickens because they get hypothermic. After they’re wet, you remove that insulation barrier. So, if you’re going to do a bath, the weather should be warm, and dry the chicken well.”
A better option is to spot-clean the area. Use a mild soap, such as Dawn or Ivory soap, and pat dry. As for removing the feathers, Dr. Kelly says that would open the vent area up for more skin damage and potential pecking from other flock members. “It’s kind of like a big, red target,” she warns. “If it’s really nasty, you can try removing some feathers, but they don’t grow back until the feathers molt out.”
Prevention in Poultry
We come back to Benjamin Franklin’s wisdom: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Providing proper nutrition and clean, sanitized water is the best way to prevent chicken gleet. Dry roosting conditions are also important.
“If their diet is all over the place with lots of kitchen scraps, then it’s kind of like garbage in, garbage out,” Dr. Kelly says. “Clean, well-kept birds, don’t usually have issues with vent gleet.”
Kenny Coogan is a food, farm, and flower columnist. He’s also part of the MOTHER EARTH NEWS and Friends podcast team. He has a master’s degree in Global Sustainability and leads workshops about owning chickens, vegetable gardening, animal training, and corporate team building. His new book, Florida’s Carnivorous Plants, is available at KennyCoogan.com.
Originally published in the April/May 2024 issue of Backyard Poultry and regularly vetted for accuracy.
