Goose with red poop. (PICTURES PENDING)

[grubbygirl]

I have 4 geese (2 males, 2 females) ranging in age from 4 years to 3 months. One of them has been having reddish/dark-orange droppings. I know it's not the gosling. All of the geese are acting fine -- eating, drinking, sleeping, socializing normally. There have been no dietary changes. They free range and get all-purpose crumbles for dinner at night. The red poops are sometimes a bit loose; soft but not watery. For the most part they have a generally normal firmness and consistency, except for the coloring. When I break apart the firmer poops, they're actually greener on the inside. The loose stools are red all the way through.

I have never wormed any of my birds (I also have 3 chickens and 6 ducks, all healthy). My sister works at a veterinary lab, so she took one of the droppings in for fecal testing last night. It tested negative for ova, parasites, and blood; just a normal poop with a few epithelial cells.

Any advice? The adult geese are molting now, and I posted in the geese forums about some concerns I had that my 4-year-old gander looked scrawnier than usual in the neck area. I don't think the two are related, but I am fully prepared to be wrong about that. His appetite is good, and he is still his usual bossy self.

I am trying to get a good picture of the droppings, but naturally I can't find any today. Perhaps the situation has resolved itself! At any rate, I would still like to know if these types of stools are abnormal in case it happens again in the future.

 

[dsqard]

Is there anything that has red berries or fruit where they free range? Read someone fed their chickens some kind of really red fruit and they had red poops the next day. She freaked until she remembered what she had fed them.

 

[grubbygirl]

Nope, nothing red. My apple trees have small green apples on them (which the geese can't reach except for the occasional dropoff) and the blackberries are in season, but these poops are definitely more orange instead of purple. I can always tell when the blackberries are ready for picking because the wild-bird splats on my car are bright purple!

Thank you for the suggestion, though!