Avoiding Future Gut Impaction

[DonyaQuick]

I have a hen that is currently recovering from a very bad gut impaction. This was NOT a crop impaction, which is the main thing that there's a lot of info for online - really not easy to find info on gizzard or intestinal impactions for birds by comparison. My hen's impaction definitely started further back, possibly in the gizzard, but definitely in the intestines. Somehow she managed to go from bouncy, eating and drinking well and having a nice hour long foraging session with the rest of the flock on a sunny late afternoon to being extremely dehydrated and stuck on the roost the next morning. The masses in her intestines were possible to feel in her abdomen as they moved through. Several days of intenstive care and medication to handle a bacterial issue that was clearly setting in partway through and she's definitely on the mend, but now I'm trying to figure out how to not have this happen again and if I need to alter anything about my setup before putting her back outside (which will be a while yet, so I have a little bit of time to make changes).

The impacted material she passed consisted of what looked like mostly very small wood bits, a bit of sand, and some other minerals. It was kind of sparkly when dry because of the minerals. One piece that was passed was basically a rock-hard cast of a Y-shaped portion of her digestive system, which I interpret to mean she had one blocked secum for a while. There was also vegetable matter passed alongside the hard impactions - quite a lot plant mattery really, but it was all tiny pieces of it. There was nothing long and fibrous like I would normally expect to cause impaction. There was maybe one or two obvious plant fibers that came out less than 1in long and they were not part of the impaction masses. The impactions did contain a couple pieces of grit - my flock has free access to that. Given how ground up everything was in the impaction and the fact that the masses encompassed pieces of grit, I believe she was eating grit normally, so I don't think this was a not-enough-grit issue.

My run substrate consists of:

• Clay-heavy soil at the very bottom (that's just what my area has)
• Pine shavings of various sizes (mostly the white bags from TSC)
• Shredded type Pine bark mulch from Lowes
• Pine bark nuggets from Lowes - the nuggets are about 2"

I ended up using those specific two pine bark products because everything else locally is cedar. My only other pine bark option is bigger, 4"+ chips that seem excessively big so I haven't tried those.

My run also has a dust bath with a mix of...

• Some of the same clay soil (it's not great by itself...they prefer other material)
• Topsoil from a local store
• Quikrete play sand - the quartz type that doesn't hold water, not the carbonate-based stuff that gets clumpy when wet. Unfortunately I can't find the exact product offhand but it's one I've read many other instances of people using in dust baths. Been using it in my dust baths for around 6 months.

My walk-in shed coop has large flake pine shavings. I recently also started using those aspen-baesd nest box pad things since my ladies were kicking all the shavings out of the nest boxes and taking down to wood, which was resulting in broken eggs. No sign of the pine shavings or the aspen fibers in the impaction material so I think I'm safe with those.

My main suspect right now is the pine bark mulch as being the main component of the blockage since there were a lot of small, dark brown woody bits. I'm not sure if that could have contributed to the dehydration state or not. My chickens have always eaten bits of the pine bark mulch here and there; I've used that stuff for 3 years now in combination with the larger bark chips.

The topsoil has some bark material, but not a huge amount. However, I had just added a new batch of topsoil and sand into the dust bath and I did let the hens mix it themselves. Perhaps I should mix it myself in the future?

There was some sand in the impaction material too of course, but I don't know if it came from the dust bath specifically; there are other sandy patches my property and the flock was foraging around a couple of those. I more suspect she ate some of those other patches due to the sparkle which would be mica.

So what would folks do in this situation? Switch to exclusively bigger material in the run?

I was originally going to start using aged wood chips from my chipper, but I'm a bit paranoid about that right now for other reasons. I very obviously have some rodents in the area spreading northern fowl mites and am worried they are probaby getting into the wood chip pile. Last thing I want to do is dump in a bunch of those bugs in my run along with the wood chips, so whatever substrate materials I use will have to be store bought for the very near term. I do not have an easy other source of other wood chips; I've looked into that in the past and gave up (part of why I originally got my own chipper).

 

[Mrs. K]

I really would not change anything. This is working for your other hens. I think this was a glitch. Rather like getting the stomach flu. It happens, you feel horrible, and later on you are fine and eat potato chips again.

However, I am not a chicken keeper that doctors my birds at all.

Mrs K

 

[DonyaQuick]

I really would not change anything. This is working for your other hens. I think this was a glitch. Rather like getting the stomach flu. It happens, you feel horrible, and later on you are fine and eat potato chips again.

However, I am not a chicken keeper that doctors my birds at all.

Mrs K

In this case I'd have had a dead bird within the day without intervention; she'd have eventually fallen off the roost from weakness and either eventually been taken out by the flock or died from the internal issues if they left her alone, since she was initially unable to drink on her own. It was a very serious impaction and state of dehydration. That's why it worries me and I'm trying to eliminate the possibility of a recurrence. I've had chickens eat stupid stuff and be a bit poorly afterwards (like when two of my cockerels binged on dried shrimp and made the whole enclosure smell like a red lobster dumpster for a solid 24h) but this was very different. When people get impactions of that relative magnitude, they end up in the ER if they don't seek medical attention soon enough. It's possible it was a freak event, but I don't want to write it off too casually if, for example, the shredded type mulch I'm using can cause this easily if a bird just nibbles a little too much one day.

 

[Mrs. K]

I agree, that it was serious. I just think it was more of a freak event, verses your set up and husbandry practices.

Mrs K

 

[DonyaQuick]

Seems like it happened again - different bird from different flock. Cockerel this time. No bark mulch in that enclosure. Impaction was much milder this time but I also caught the dehydration within just a few hours of the bird being bouncy and normal (noticed in the evening vs catching it the next morning). The dehydration was less severe, and I think he already passed whatever the issue was which looked like just some well ground up plant matter. I think I may have the causes mixed up. This time the only series of events that makes sense is if the bird ate something bad during a brief forage earlier in the day that made him stop drinking for whatever reason. It was a cool day. Bad plants I need to look for?? He didn’t forage over a large area so I guess I will pick over it carefully today…

 

[DonyaQuick]

Ok so this is what I have as symptoms shared between these two cases...

• bird found in dehydrated state
• weakness
• wincing at internal pain whenever something goes "gurgle" inside the bird
• some kind of compacted material passed after dehydration fixed
• vegetable matter (obviously from outdoor plants) in at least one of those

And this is what I have learned about meadow buttercups.

• not a problem until crushed (I guess that would be once it's int the gizzard if it's just ripped and swallowed fast)
• should taste bad but animals may ingest them with other things
• causes serious digestive problems and pain
• some sources list it as causing neurological issues
• a whole heap of small ones had popped up under and mixed in with other vegetation in an area where my chickens frequently graze on. There were several places where tasty dandelions had small buttercup leaves tangled up with them. Buttercup was not in the vegetation mix there last year.

I think I misdiagnosed the first situation and it's seeming more likely both birds were actually mildly poisoned by something, with that then leading to dehydration and eventual impaction. The symptoms were similar enough I find it difficult to write these off as separate, unrelated events.

So I have gone on a small buttercup murdering spree in that area. It was the only poisinous thing I found. There are plenty of other flowing things in the area and everything else in that frequent foraging patch that I can find is safe for chickens.

 

[pdnarus10]

Seems like it happened again - different bird from different flock. Cockerel this time. No bark mulch in that enclosure. Impaction was much milder this time but I also caught the dehydration within just a few hours of the bird being bouncy and normal (noticed in the evening vs catching it the next morning). The dehydration was less severe, and I think he already passed whatever the issue was which looked like just some well ground up plant matter. I think I may have the causes mixed up. This time the only series of events that makes sense is if the bird ate something bad during a brief forage earlier in the day that made him stop drinking for whatever reason. It was a cool day. Bad plants I need to look for?? He didn’t forage over a large area so I guess I will pick over it carefully today…

Some weeds are bad for animals to eat. Check that? I don't use bark or pine. I use aspen. Difference? Ive found that Sand is easier to clean