Strange neck behavior

I have Golden comets that are 2 1/2 years old. One of them has always had an excessively large craw - so big & wobbly that we named her Mrs Jiggles when she was just 6 or 8 months old.

Well Mrs J has developed a strange neck twitch - my kids said before Christmas but I've only recently noticed how bad it's got. She kind of does this neck wiggle/ dance, and it looks very uncomfortable. She'll do it for a few minutes then stop and eat. When she does it, it looks like she has a swelling on the side of her neck, but I can't feel a lump there.

has anyone seen anything like this? I am not sure if it's related to her excessive craw, wondering if she has been eating gravel over time or something & is now struggling to swallow? though her crop area isn't hard. Most of the time they are in a run but a few evenings each week they are let out around our yard and in the woods.

Any ideas?

Does it look like she is having tremors in the neck?

No, not tremors. By twitch I mean more like something she can't stop doing than tremor/ twitchy.

Ok, the best I can describe is it looks like a strange dance, her head dips to the right then kind of "S" wiggles back up. Repeatedly. Then she'll stop and eat.

The reason I ask is that I have been posting a similar question like yours to see if anyone has had a bird doing this same thing, and nobody answers. It starts out as a tiny tremor in the neck, barely visible and then over time progresses to what you are discribing, a swirving of the head, uncontrolable movements at the neck area, this bulge in the side of the neck.

So I think I know exactly what you are talking about. I have a chicken that has been doing this for sometime now. She had what I think is AE as a baby, (Avian Encephalomyelitis). It is a virus past down from the parent in the egg. It can kill chicks when they are small and she really suffered badly. But did survive. (Neck tremors, leg paralysis or weakness, etc) But now that she is grown, she has started up with these movements again and when I saw your post, I just had to write.

I really really hope you find an answer here. My girl doesn't seem to be bothered much by them and continues on with her life. But I am always worrying it could turn in to something that could kill her.

I hope your girl is ok and maybe someone will answer this question for the both of us.

Oh and....

ahh thanks! I will watch more closely. Like I said, I hadn't noticed it so much until now but my daughter notices every details of each chicken. It almost looks like she's doing the attitude head/ neck roll. I will read up on AE too.

On the off chance that she does have a blockage, I just spent 10 minutes massaging her crop, and it did actually seem to soften a tad. I also crushed up a tums in some water and she took a couple of big swigs of that deciding enough was enough.,
She pecks her crop area raw a lot and I thought she'd stopped but as I massaged her tonight, I found another bald area so sprayed on some blue cote (and forgot the gloves so my right hand is purple now).

If it is a blockage, it doesn't affect her appetite any, she eats like a hog LOL

Thanks for the welcome. I joined last year, just never actually log in!

Do either of you see your chicken hold her mouth open somethings like she's yawning?

Not that I have noticed. The kids said they haven't noted that either. I will add it to things to watch for.

Do you think it is Wry Neck? One day I came out to the coop and my Blue Orpington (who is really large) looked like she had fallen and hurt her neck. She also looked like she had vertigo. Kind of a kinked neck. Wait, let me find a picture....

I was looking at some wry neck photos, but I thought that was a permanent thing? Like the wind changed and they stick like that? She can still get her neck straight, but does the wiggle thing for minutes at a time.

Maybe I will video it tomorrow if I get time.