pendulous crop

I'm wondering if anyone has any advice to offer for my Cochin with a pendulous crop. We are fairly new to this, having just had our first hatch this past summer, so our birds are now 6 months old. Our Cochin has always had a large crop, but this past week started vomiting. I now realize she has a pendulous crop. I wish I had realized it earlier before it got so bad. Anyway, up until the last couple days, she has been acting totally fine. A friend who has years of experience with chickens showed me how to empty her crop, and that has now been done twice in the past week. It is enlarged again. I have tried just feeding her yogurt, she had a day of fasting after the last time I had to empty it, I have fed her veggie oil and massaged her crop, and I made a crop bra for her to hold her crop up. Nothing seems to be helping her. She has been in isolation since Thursday night, and there are really no droppings in her pen, so nothing seems to be getting out of her crop into the rest of her digestive system. She is now not eating (she has been drinking up until today - I am not sure yet about today). I really don't know what more I can do for her to try to get things moving out of her crop. If anyone has any suggestions of other things we could do, that would be great. If there is anyone out there who has successfully treated a pendulous crop, I'd love to hear from you. Most of the things I have read about it do not sound hopeful for a good prognosis. She is such a sweet, friendly, dear chicken, I'll be really sorry if she doesn't make it. I have to say at this point I'm not having a lot of hope.
Thanks,
Amy

It sounds like her crop is impacted if nothing is getting through out the other end. And yes, this can be fatal. If you have tried a crop bra and it hasn't worked I would strongly suggest a trip to the vet. My hen Cornelia Marie is just home from the vet having spent 10 days in the hospital after her second crop surgery. Her crop was so stretched out that even after it was emptied out the first time, the crop just filled back up again. We also tried isolation and crop bras but the vet ended up having to resect her crop to make it smaller and put a feeding tube in to give her crop a rest. But there was no way we could treat it on our own. Best of luck to you. Hope your baby gets well soon.

Thanks for your reply. Are you able to give me a ballpark amount of how much this surgery and recovery cost?
Thanks again.

here is a link to crop problems, Pendulous crop is listed in here as well, really good information..

http://fowlfacts.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=afflictiondiseaseff&action=display&thread=1188

I recently had crop surgery on a RIR hen. Cost was $315 but worth it to me as it saved my bird and she's back to normal.

Well, the news is not good for our Cochin. I took her to a vet yesterday, and he said the prognosis is not good. He said he could do surgery on her crop (which he said would be $200-300), but he said there is usually nerve damage with pendulous crop and the success rate of the surgery is not even 50%, which is what I had read elsewhere. He feels the surgery would just put her through more suffering and be very unlikely to help her. He did say that she has a severe pendulous crop, so perhaps the prognosis would be better in a situation where it was not so severe. I'm really sad as she is the sweetest, friendliest bird.

Sorry to hear about your hen. If you're considering non-invasive therapy, there is a lot on this board that may help you. My hen had sour crop so her crop was enlarged and very "squishy." I would not have called it "pendulous" but it was large. When I squeezed it the first time, stinky materials came out. Since the crop is not a muscle, chickens cannot vomit by themselves. You can cause the crop contents to "be vomited" by holding the bird upside down (making certain that the head is not allowed to be lifted up during the process so the bird aspirates) and therefore, eventually removing the materials that block the crop. It would seem it would be worth the try. Feel free to post your questions prior to attempting this so those on the board with experience can offer their suggestions.

Hi, Amy.

Saw your request about your dear little hen so I wanted to respond. I've been down this road before and have learned some
things that may or may not help you.

In addition to trying to help your bird by emptying the crop, I discovered a problem that also results in the crop issue. One of
Australorps got through the fencing (and also leading some of her sisters astray with her). I didn't notice she was out for a period of time but it was long enough that they were all having a big time...scratching and digging all over the place.

Two days later, I saw her (her name is Ruth) standing like a "penguin" rather than her usual lively self. When I picked her up, I immediately knew her crop had problems. My first remedy was to keep her in the house, empty her crop and hopefully return
her to normal. After two days and numerous emptying of her crop, she did not improve.

I am fortunate enough to have a vet nearby who knows birds, so since all my birds are so special, I wanted to take her to him at that point rather than wait until she got too weak. I told him of her escapade out of the fence and that since she had been so good prior to that, I felt she may have eaten something that was causing her to "clog up" somewhere.

He recommended an x-ray and I agreed. Lo and behold, I was right! Her gall bladder was enlarged. There was only one chance for success and that was metachlorpramide hcl syrup given daily. It is a drug that causes muscle to squeeze and hopefully, that would expel whatever it was.

I had to keep her in the house to watch for bowel movements and thankfully, it worked. I don't recall how long it took since it was a while ago...maybe 3 days or so. But, I was mighty happy to see that poop begin again.

Ruth, by the way, will be 7 years old in June! I call her my million dollar girl since I've spent so much on her. She had had crop surgery to remove a huge grass ball, the gall bladder problem and she has a cyst below her vent that has to be drained from time to time. I love this little thing and am thankful that there is a vet who knows about birds and that there are enough extra funds to support my bird habit!

So, sour crop may be caused by the crop being clogged or by the gall bladder being clogged. Since your bird is so young, I have a feeling it may be her gall bladder. Could she have gotten into something that was large enough to clog her?

Give it some thought. I hope this helps and that maybe you, too, have a vet nearby that may be able to help. Keep me posted, if you don't mind. I always hate knowing that people have chicken problems when we want to care for them so well.

I had responded without reading any of the above posts so I wanted to add. Ruth had crop surgery and the total bill was "only" $80 or so. The surgery itself was $30 but she had to have antibiotics as follow-up. It was a total success. I would not hesitate to have it done again. She acted a though nothing had happened! They're tough as nails.

Hang in there.