Chickens don’t excrete urine because they have no bladder or urethra. Their kidneys generate urine with uric acid. The cloaca is the only outlet for urine to escape the body. Food travels from the ceca to the large intestine, which absorbs water and dries it.
Leftover waste mixes with chicken urine (the white in chicken droppings) in the cloaca. Each leaves the chicken through the vent, the cloaca’s outside.
Let’s get to the details and understand the excretory system of the chickens.
The Excretory System of the Chickens – Discussed
The excretory system of the birds consists of two kidneys, two ureters, and one cloaca. The urine is produced by the kidneys and passed through the ureter which is carried to the cloaca and then it leaves the body. The main function of the kidney is to maintain the electrolytic and water balance of the body and to remove metabolic wastes, including nitrogen products.
The birds do not have any bladder, so the urine after reaching the cloaca gets moved to the large intestine through the process of peristalsis. Here the excess water gets reabsorbed and then the waste products are eliminated. However, birds have a limited ability to concentrate the urine, unlike the animals.
The urine is eliminated in thick paste form and it has a very low water content and high uric acid due to the nitrogen metabolism. The urine gets deposited outside the body in the form of whitish cream on top of fecal stools which are crystals of uric acid. Thus, chickens are seen to poop instead of pee and they have only one type of waste.
Why Do Chickens Produce a Lot of Excreta?
Chickens have a high rate of feed passage when compared with other animals, thus they produce a lot of excreta. When a chicken starts to eat food, the speed at which the food starts to move through the digestive system is known as the rate of feed passage which is less than 24 hours.
A matured chicken is found to poop every 30 minutes and smaller ones are more often, around 15 to 48 times a day. Also, they drink a lot of water, which is twice as much water as feed consumed. Specifically, when they drink and are on the roost, they excrete more. If you have a flock of 10 chickens then they would produce 150 to 480 dropping in a day.
How Much Does a Chicken Poop?
To understand how much a chicken would poop, you need to understand the feed conversion mechanism. So, if you feed an adult chicken 2 pounds of feed, which has 2 pounds of feed per pound gain, then it will gain 1 pound of weight and the rest will be excreted out. The feed conversion ratio changes for egg-laying hens as they are putting more energy into egg production as well.
What Happens if Waste is Not Removed From the Body?
Waste materials are eliminated from the body in three particular ways – perspiration, urination, and defecation. However, chickens have only two ways to eliminate this waste – defecation and urination. They do not sweat, as chickens lack sweat glands.
If the waste keeps building up in the body then toxic waste can start accumulating inside the body of the chicken, leading to pH imbalance and an increase in blood pressure, which leads to severe illness and death of the chicken.
It has been found that if a chicken is kept on a high protein diet, then a large quantity of uric acid starts to accumulate in the blood and the excretory system is unable to cope with it and becomes unstable. This leads to inflammation of the kidney tubules and urate deposits can be found on the kidneys and surface of visceral organs. These conditions can lead to infectious bronchitis and ultimately kidney failure.
Can You Use Chicken Excreta as Fertilizer?
Yes, the chicken excretes or poop can be used as fertilizer and it also gets absorbed more quickly into the soil. They are known to create high-value manure which can be used for compost piles and in a year, you could get about 15 gallons of manure. You can use chicken manure for soil fertilization restoration as it consists of high levels of potassium, nitrogen, diverse microbes, calcium, and organic compounds. You can use the manure for fueling soil microbes, retaining water, reducing soil erosion and fertilizer leaching, etc.
Can You Store Chicken Manure?
Yes, you can store chicken manure, but while storing the manure, you need to keep it away from children, pets, and other livestock as it contains harmful pathogens. You also need to compost and age the manure in a separate space until it becomes soil. Also, during the composting process, the temperature might reach 140 to 160 degrees Fahrenheit which would eventually kill the harmful pathogens.
However, you need to wait for five to six weeks before you can use it as a fertilizer for the plants, and for the nitrogen and ammonia to come down to safe levels. Remember, do not apply the manure less than 4 months prior to the harvest.
Do Chickens Pee While Roosting on the Bar?
Yes, chickens drop poop even at night, while they roost on the roosting bar as they do not have any bladder to store the waste. So, the urine and poop leaves the body in the form of droppings as soon as they are produced.
