What the heck is he doing?...

Thank you all. We had all that rain for 12 days straight, and since Tuesday I've let them out of the run to free range the backyard so they were probably getting all the grass they could get lol.

Will definitely let you know when all is well with them. I remember my EE and Wyandotte having a slight impacted crop and it corrected itself... thankfully, because I don't think I was a member here on BYC back then. This community is full of information and I love all the chicken-chatter =D

Hey there SemperChicken

First up, I am not an expert on what ails chickens and I am probably sharing something you have already sourced from the links Mutt Farm suggested, but I have had a couple of hens doing the same thing and they had sour/impacted crop.

It was back in my learning curve days and I was feeding my gals grass clippings from the lawn mow; which they loved. However, as I was a newb, I did not realise that long grass can cause impacted crop and even through they still get lawn clippings now, it is only from when the lawn has had a minor trim and never anything with any real length to it.

I was able to recover both of my gals and as Mutt Farm has mentioned, sardines in oil work wonderfully well! It helps that my gals love sardines

Anyways, I removed their access to grain, fed them sardines in oil and gently massaged their crop after each feed. I also gave them some yoghurt to balance the bacterial levels in the crop.

Following the sardines, the next morning, while not totally empty, the crop had recovered significantly and the morning after that, completely empty. I fed them some scrambled eggs and yoghurt on day 3 and they were back to normal and eating grains etc by day 4.

Hope that helps and good luck with them

PS. I confess to also thinking SemperChicken was on the right of the avatar, not the left

I love all the chicken-chatter also .. my hubby walks past the computer and says “On chookie-chat again?”

So, I checked the girls and Roo this morning and their crops were completely empty. Very relieved to feel their chest and see that they were not stuffed full still. I'm going to just limit their outside time for a couple days, make sure they drink enough water. I've got my littles out free-ranging since they haven't had much time (I'm hoping Roo ceases to be so hostile towards them sometime soon... he is very adamant about charging them, yet they've been "see but don't touch" for over a month now).

@Teila , we're probably going to pick up some sardines today just to have in case this happens again in the future. I had to deal with coccidiosis earlier last week and so I have a bag of corid that I'm glad I can have for any future cases. And did you mean that you didn't realize that it was the guy in the picture who came to this forum? lol.. yea, I'm guilty... crazy chicken guy, not lady. My wife loves them too, don't get me wrong, but I think I'm more of the fanatic when it comes to the chickens. She got our first two last year spring, an EE and SL Wyandotte, but I have grown much more attached to having chickens.

Thanks so much, again, for all the tips and pointing me in the right direction on how to treat impacted/sour crops. Like I said, I didn't know what to search cause I had no clue really what to call it that I was seeing (I wouldn't have thought to search "neck jerking"). Anyway, thanks y'all!

SemperChicken said:

So, I checked the girls and Roo this morning and their crops were completely empty. Very relieved to feel their chest and see that they were not stuffed full still. I'm going to just limit their outside time for a couple days, make sure they drink enough water. I've got my littles out free-ranging since they haven't had much time (I'm hoping Roo ceases to be so hostile towards them sometime soon... he is very adamant about charging them, yet they've been "see but don't touch" for over a month now).

Thanks so much, again, for all the tips and pointing me in the right direction on how to treat impacted/sour crops. Like I said, I didn't know what to search cause I had no clue really what to call it that I was seeing (I wouldn't have thought to search "neck jerking"). Anyway, thanks y'all!

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You are welcome! So glad @Teila had experience with sardines. Great tips she gave! About your roo, I have wonderful success with a long range squirt bottle. I'd give him a squirt right in the face every time he zero's in on them. He will learn that hostility to littles causes a rain storm.

Mutt Farm said:

You are welcome! So glad @Teila
 had experience with sardines. Great tips she gave! About your roo, I have wonderful success with a long range squirt bottle. I'd give him a squirt right in the face every time he zero's in on them. He will learn that hostility to littles causes a  rain storm. 

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LOL that is so funny, cause we've had to do that with our pups when they were younger. Amazing how a little squirt of water will help teach a pet behavior changes. Thanks for that!