Hard crop

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Lenka

Lenka

Songster
7 Years
Jun 30, 2013
116
36
146
hey all, I have a chicken that has a hard crop. She's breathing with her mouth open and is slightly lethargic. She will let me pick her up, but does complain like normal. her poop looks normal. I've isolated her, not sure if i should put her on my porch tonight as it is gonna rain, or leave her in the small enclosure that i have at the moment.. any ideas? She has been vaccinated for Mareks.
 
I think you should keep her by herself and give her water and make a soupy mush out of her food and a little olive oil. I even give bits of bread with olive oil. Then she needs her crop massaged at least 3 times a day. When you massage it, think of it as breaking up the clump. Sometimes they eat a bunch of stuff that gets formed into a ball in their crop that can't move because it's too hard.
Apple sauce is good, too. Anything really wet or mushy. Both times I've had it it took me about 5-6 days to move it all along. You can see in their poo when they start passing pieces of the lump.

If that's a Speckled Sussex, I have 4 who over load their crops so huge!
 
Last edited:
seminolewind said:
I think you should keep her by herself and give her water and make a soupy mush out of her food and a little olive oil. I even give bits of bread with olive oil. Then she needs her crop massaged at least 3 times a day. When you massage it, think of it as breaking up the clump. Sometimes they eat a bunch of stuff that gets formed into a ball in their crop that can't move because it's too hard.
Apple sauce is good, too. Anything really wet or mushy. Both times I've had it it took me about 5-6 days to move it all along. You can see in their poo when they start passing pieces of the lump.

If that's a Speckled Sussex, I have 4 who over load their crops so huge!
Click to expand...
thank you for the reply, I will do that! I massaged her crop last night a bit, and will do again today and do the food with olive oil.
 
So I massaged the crop and now its pretty empty and the chicken looked better, wasn't breathing as heavily, but now she's still breathing heavy again, but the crop isn't huge at all. Im still gonna keep her separated and give her olive oil and soft food and shed if she gets better.
 
If her crop is emptying, that's great. What does her poop look like? Did you check her for an egg that's stuck? (Yes with oil and a finger). If there's no egg, I would put her on Tylan for the heavy breathing. Do any of your chickens have anything respiratory going on?
I'm not an expert, I'm just communicating that with my experiences, this is what I'd be doing. Sometimes poop tells a lot. But I think that with chickens, they have an abundance of symptoms that fit a lot of illnesses. So I look at things with the most frequently or common and treat it. Otherwise I'll think of going to a vet.

So I try to think about treating symptoms more than trying to figure out how to treat the whole picture. How does she feel between her vent and her legs (abdomen)?
 
I don't think theres an egg stuck, she's barely 15 weeks old. Her poop is green white urate looking stuff. (looks like forage poop there is nothing wormy in it at all). I can go get tylan today. do you know what the dose is?

thank you so much for your help!
 
The dose for Powder Tylan is 1-2 tsp per gallon of water for 5 days. You'll have to decide whether she needs 1 or 2 tsps. by how bad her symptoms are.

If her crop is emptying, she can be fed more.

Chickens are hard to figure out sometimes.
 
Well, I was planning on coming home from work and letting you know that she was doing great, making chicken noises again, being active and looking like she was ready to go home to her siblings.... but unfortunately I came home and found her dead in her temp home. I am so bummed right now. The speckleds are my favorites and I just had the 2, after losing 2 earlier in chickhood. :( I don't know what went wrong, her crop wasnt full, but I didn't feel like doing a full necropsy on her.

Thank you so much for your help and advice!
 

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