The Easy Way to Clean a Poopy Chick Butt and How to Sex Chicks

All our keets and chicks are doing well.  We got 4 Rhode Island Red (RIR) chicks and 4 Cuckoo Maran chicks from the farmer's market yesterday.  They were all 1 day old.  They were incubator chicks, we were told.  They all did great bonding with a mama hen, especially the RIRs.  The Cuckoo Marans really just wanted to sleep yesterday.  Today they are bonding with their mama hen very well.

Of course we wanted pullets, so we tried these methods we found online:

To determine the sex of a Rhode Island Red chick:

1. Look at its feathers on the edge of the wing. If the chick has two uneven rows of feathers its female. If both rows are even, male. 
2.  Females have dark spots on her head or back.  Males have stripes

  We really noticed a difference in the wing feathers- some were even, some were definitely uneven.  We chose all uneven.  It was hard to tell about the spots or stripes.

To determine the sex of a Cuckoo Maran chick:

1. Females are darker, males are lighter. 

That sounds easy enough, but they all were generally the same shade of black.  Some had more white spots.  We chose the darkest ones available.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Today I checked all the chicks (and all the keets, too) for signs of a poopy butt.  Sometimes poop sticks to the bottom of a chick and dries, making the chick unable to poop.  This can kill the chick.  Mama hens will try to pick the poop off the chick.  One of the cuckoo marans had a poopy butt, and so I brought her in the house and had a great idea.  Last year when we had chicks, I used to wipe the chick's bottom with a warm damp wash rag and try to wipe the poop off.  The chick would scream and fight.  It wasn't a happy time for the chick.

This time, I put some warm water in the bathroom sink so it was just high enough to cover the chick's butt when she stood in it.  Then I put her in it and swooshed water around her bottom.  I held her there for about 5 minutes.  At first she fought, then she calmed down and almost went to sleep in the warm water.  It was a relaxing spa for the chick!  I took her out and wiped her bottom with a wet tissue, which is much softer than a wash rag.  The poop easily wiped off her butt in a second.   It was so easy!  I thought I'd share this concept, since that's what blogging is all about - sharing ideas.

I lightly dried the chick with a tissue and put her with her mama hen.  She took 2 steps and made the biggest poop I've ever seen come from a chick.  Then she flapped her wings and bounced around with the other chicks.  Problem solved!