How to Clean A Chicken Butt

**Warning: This post contains images of chicken butts AND poop**

Also, the baby in the title picture is a turkey, not a chicken. 

When the chickens are grown, they are really low maintenance, but when they are chicks, they require a little more work. Making sure they are climate controlled, fed and have clean water are among the more pleasant tasks. However, there is another thing that you must check for when you have chicks - a thing called pasty butt. 

What is pasty butt?  It happens when the vent that covers the chicken's butt becomes blocked. If the vent is blocked, then no poop can pass through it - this could be potentially fatal to the chick. Because of this, it is important to monitor the chicks as closely as possible. 

Pasty butt is a condition that mostly happens when the chickens are brand new. The stress from being mailed to you is one cause of the condition.  This happened to our chicken on the second night that we had them. 

How to fix it:

We used lukewarm water in a coffee cup, olive oil and Q-tips.  Some people pour water over the chicken's butt, but this could make the chick unnecessarily cold, and is even more traumatic.  We just rub gently with a wet Q-tip to loosen any hardened poop.  Then we put olive oil on another Q-tip and rub around the vent.

Viola! The poop is gone, and our chicken can be happy again!

The entire process only takes a few minutes, but is an essential step in making sure your baby chicks survive. 

**Don't let this process deter you from purchasing chickens** Out of six chickens we only really had to clean one butt, but did two because one was questionable. There is a possibility that you wouldn't have to do this at all. 

Besides, why would you want to miss out on this opportunity - bonding over cleaning butts is totally romantic!