Lost a hen a week ago and now another hen is pooping grass too… any ideas?

[ChickInnMama]

Good morning,

Last Monday we had to finally cull our little hen Evelyn, after 2+ weeks of her having an impacted crop then sour crop, then impacted again. We never could get it to go back to normal and she was slowly starving. My question is this, can fermented feed cause crop issues? Or seeds? We had started buying a seed mix with fruit in it at Tractor Supply (for chickens) instead of their normal mealworms/black fly larvae that we usually give them because it was cheaper and we didn’t have to order it off Amazon. But after about a month or a month and half of that is when we realized that Evelyn had an impacted crop. It was full of grass. When she pooped it was just grass all compacted together with white stuff around it. She occasionally would also poop out seeds. I started fermenting organic scratch for them again when Evelyn got sick after we had gotten it to empty as much as possible thinking that maybe that would help her. It didn’t and she continued to eat a ton of grass. After we culled her I cut her crop open and it was full of grass and smelled like gasoline, it smelled rotted. Now another hen from that same coop (we have 2 coops, one with 5 hens and the other had 3, now 2) is pooping grass with white around it and I’ve noticed that the poop in that coop has gone down, like she’s not pooping any more than that maybe but my other hen is pooping okay. I stopped giving them seeds before we even had to cull Evelyn because I wondered if that was making them sick or have things stuck in their crops? And I also stopped the fermented scratch and just went back to their normal crumbles and mealworm/fly larvae mix (they just get a little of that when I let them out in the morning, that’s when I had been giving them seeds, they will occasionally get it later in the day if we have somewhere to go and won’t be back by time to lock them up, I’ll give them some to get them back into their runs and then lock their coops up when we get home at night). Any ideas? A number of my ladies are molting right now and Josephine is the one I think is pooping out grass, so eating grass, and she is molting pretty good, it doesn’t seem to be a super hard molt but she’s definitely molting. The other hen in that coop Charlotte seems to be okay other than her ongoing issues with having bubbles in her eye and a swollen ear that she’s had since the spring (she had also had that last spring 2023 and antibiotics cleared it up then but not anymore and she seems fine otherwise and we tried a bunch of stuff but nothing helped so we’ve just let her be). Why would chicken eat grass? I felt both of their little crops this morning and they just felt normal, slightly squishy. But a few days last week I felt what felt like seeds in Josephine’s crop, I didn’t feel that today though. Any ideas? Thoughts? Advice?
We are in FL near Tampa area so we are going to have to lock them up in the garage in crates tomorrow evening through at least Thursday while we clean up after the hurricane so I’m also open to any advice on how to make that as stress free for them as possible since they’re already molting and I know that stresses them out…. They’ve been locked up in crates in the garage or bathroom a number of times for hurricanes so it’s not new but they’ve never been molting during it or sick/just lost a friend.

Thanks so much!!

 

[HollowOfWisps]

What feed and seeds are you feeding (brand/type)? How much are you giving your chickens daily? What other extras are you feeding? Are they receiving grit? You said that you are fermenting feed when you ferment does it smell slightly sweet or very sour?

 

[ChickInnMama]

This is a picture of Evelyn’s poop before she passed away… Josephine isn’t pooping out nearly this big of poop pieces but I wanted to show what it looks like. This is after I kinda broke it apart, it comes out like a cylinder and is coated in a thin white layer of something? My hens for the most part (other than poor Charlotte with her eye and ear stuff for the last year and half on and off) have been very healthy and we let them free range in our yard, they have plenty of space and they get good food and some treats but not too many. I keep their water clean and clean their coops often. I just did a deep clean last Tuesday, took all the bedding out like normal but scrubbed the coops, vacuumed them out and added poultry dust for any bugs, I also added some food grade DE to the bedding (just mixed it before I put it in the coop) to help keep bugs down. I did see some little bugs in the coop bedding but none on my girls. We did put some of the poultry dust on them (behind their heads, on their butt feathers and tail feathers and under their wings) just in case because they do constantly mess with their feathers and I was worried they had mites or lice or something but when I had my husband hold them while I put some on them we checked their feathers and their skin and we didn’t see anything at all and their skin looked a little dry maybe or maybe it was normal, but definitely no bugs.

 

[ChickInnMama]

What feed and seeds are you feeding (brand/type)? How much are you giving your chickens daily? What other extras are you feeding? Are they receiving grit? You said that you are fermenting feed when you ferment does it smell slightly sweet or very sour?

Slightly sweet, maybe a little sour? I added some of my kombucha the first time to help it ferment faster, I read online that you could add unflavored kombucha to it to kick start it. I only did that once and then I would take the leftover water and add it to the next batch and add more water. But I haven’t given them fermented feed in probably a week? We feed them Nutrena Naturewise Layer Feed 16% crumbles and we had been giving them Impeckables natural grain pickings (fruit and worms and we also had done a veggie and worms) it’s grains with worms and fruit/veggies added but it really didn’t have many worms in it. Now we’re back to the mealworms/fly larvae made by Petamore, we get that on Amazon and we’ve used those for at least a year maybe two. They do have access to grit and oyster shell all the time.

 

[ChickInnMama]

Oh and this may be important… sorry it’s so much information I just want to make sure I give a full picture. I was sick for 9 weeks starting in July and into the first few weeks of September with fluid around my heart and unable to breath well and it kept me pretty much laying down. I usually am the one taking care of my girls, my family helps but it’s mostly me. I keep their waterers really clean but during that time with everyone else working and trying to pick up my slack there were times that their water got green on the waterers. I don’t know if that can throw off their ph? Or cause other issues. They are obviously back to being clean and I add just a little apple cider vinegar to them most of the time. But maybe I should just replace their waterers now?