Do chickens pee or urinate?

Chicken pee is white crystals on the outside of their poos

Yes, chickens do pee, they just do not urinate a stream of liquid like mammals, this is because they do not have a bladder. A chickens urine is the white crystals you see on the outside of the poop.

Below: The white crystals you see in the picture are a chickens pee.

A chickens kidneys process and concentrate the urea into a whitish solid, rather than process it into a solution of urine. This is actually quite useful for the backyard flock keeper as the lack of liquid urine makes keeping chickens easier.

Instead a chickens kidneys convert their urine into white uric acid crystals. These crystals are then deposited in to the droppings.

If you have seen chicken poop before, this is the white layer that you can see on the droppings

Chickens mix all their excreted waste products with undigested food. So their faeces and urine are combined and pass out in a single motion.

So chicken poo is a mixture of waste. This is why it is so good as fertiliser. The concentrated excretory products contain a lot of nitrogen.

They pass out of the birds body through the cloaca which is also the same exit with which female birds receive sperm from the male bird, and lay eggs.

This is the reason chicken droppings are such good fertiliser if you have chickens and you have a garden. The whitish part has urea, which is rich in nitrogen, an excellent plant food.

Chickens have no need for a urethra since they don't urinate. Instead they coat their faeces with uric acid that exits their body through the cloaca as moist chicken poop.

How do chickens urinate?

Chickens, or all birds, have a versatile multi-purpose opening called a Cloaca.

Urea is the by-product of protein metabolism in animals which is water soluble and released in the liquid we call urine.

In birds this by-product is excreted as uric acid which is not water soluble. Uric acid crystals are deposited on the faecal material when they defecate. So you can look at chicken poo and see white on it - that white is uric acid crystals which is the bird's version of pee.

There is a myth doing the rounds that chickens urinate through their skin. This is not true at all, chickens have kidneys and produce uric acid crystals and excrete it through the vent. Chickens do not even have sweat glands in their skin.

How often do chickens pee?

Chicken get rid of uric acid crystals every time they poop. Although the actual amounts vary it happens between 20 and 40 times a day. A chickens digestive system world at night as well.

Do chickens pee and poop from the same hole?

The eggs, poop and urine all exits out of the same hole, also called the vent or cloaca.

When the egg is laid the chicken's Cloaca is turned inside out so that the egg cannot come in contact with the contents of the intestines. 

Why can't you see a chicken pee?

While chickens do pee, the pass urine as white crystals that cover their poo. They have one bodily orifice, the cloaca, that serves as rectum, urethra, and vagina. The waste they produce is pee and poop all rolled into one. 

The pee or urine is the wet white crystals and the poop is the green solid nugget.

Do chickens have kidneys?

Yes chickens have kidneys which filter the blood in the normal way. They just absorb almost all of the water back into the system in the loop of henle,  leaving a white smear on the droppings.