Drinking A LOT of water

[karmical]

Just wondering if anyone else has a hen that drinks A LOT of water every day. One of my Faverolles drinks at least 5x the amount of water that my other girls drink. She doesn't act sick or anything, just drinks and drinks and drinks. She seems to be in perfectly fine health apart from a bout of runny poop she had recently for about a week, but that is now back to normal.

I am probably over-thinking this, but just wonder if there's such a thing as diabetes in chickens....isn't being super thirsty a symptom of that?

Anybody else out there who has a super-thirsty bird?

Tracy

 

[Oopoo]

what's her pecking order? Maybe she has to drink what she can when she can.

 

[karmical]

Hmmm....I hadn't thought of that. I actually have her and just one other hen together as a pair, as they like to feather pick my other four girls, but they don't seem to pick each other. Anyhooo...she IS the bottom bird in the duo, so maybe that's it.

 

[skippakate]

I have 11 girls and for a couple days they have been drinking water like they never had any. It is in the 30's at night and low 50's during the day. I filled up the gallon water this moring around 8:00 (it was empty) and at 4 this evening it was empty again. When I filled it up, they were starved for water so I added another gallon. They never go through a gallon in a day. I am courious what might have changed.

 

[GoldenSparrow]

one of my hens drinks a ton of water too. I wonder what it could be?

 

[Cindy in PA]

Mine seem to be drinking more also and I suspect it is because they are eating more this time of year. I would love to know how you know that one chicken is drinking 5 times more than the others?? Just curious,as I would have no clue.

 

[speckledhen]

When one does that, check her for sour crop just to make sure she doesn't have that. That makes them drink copious amounts of water.

 

[GoldenSparrow]

How do you check for sour crop?

 

[LaurelRidgeDreams]

When was the last time you wormed her? I had this problem last year and capillaria was the reason. Also had runny poo but it didin'tclear up.

 

[BellevueOmlet]

I had a chicken that was doing the same thing, just gulping water all day. She is fine and has not had any problems so I am not concerned. I was very worried for a while because I had a cat with the same problem a few years ago and it ended up being because of bad kidneys and led to her bad health and so on.

Chickens just seem to get super thirsty sometime