Cas, Yep, considering they don't weight much, I agree the do need to stay hyrated, and can dehydrate fast!
So, was looking around on the internet and found this.
How to Identify and Treat Sour Crop in Chickens
Sour crop is a horrible poultry disorder but there are ways to fight it. When a chicken has sour crop, if not treated quickly the condition can be fatal. Last updated: Mar 25, 2013
Sour crop is treatable if caught in time.
Sour crop is a condition caused by the crop not fully emptying. An accumulation of food begins to ferment and is either caused by or results in a plug of material blocking passage further into the digestive system. A fungal infection rapidly takes hold, making the problem even worse.
What the Crop is sour croup.
The crop is the pouch of skin below a chicken’s wattles (dangly bits under the beak). It is where food goes when swallowed before heading further into the digestive system. The crop varies in size depending upon how much food a chicken has consumed, sometimes appearing to be a quite heavy and round ball and on other occasions being more like an empty bag.
When something goes wrong with the workings of the crop, a chicken finds itself in trouble very quickly.
How to Recognise Sour Crop
It is easy to identify sour crop. The symptoms are as follows:
- crop fails to empty.
- chicken has awful bad breath.
- crop seems filled with water and has a balloon-like feel.
- an affected bird may jerk its head around, trying to dislodge a blockage.
- the crop is abnormally large and does not fluctuate in size.
A chicken that has suffered from sour crop for a while will also display the following symptoms:
- significant weight loss.
- disengagement from social activity with the rest of the flock.
- little if any interest in eating or drinking.
- droopy tail.
- unusually depressed responses to external stimuli.
How to Make Sour Crop go Away
- Isolate the chicken. Separating the bird with sour crop from its flock provides it with the space needed for a quiet and stress-free recovery.
- Don’t feed solid food. No layers’ pellets, no corn, no greens. These will only further exacerbate the problem.
- Try soft food. Cold mashed potatoes (no butter or salt) and plain boiled rice are good choices. Such foods stand a chance of getting past any blockage, and won’t worsen the problem.
- Clean water must always be accessible but do not add anything to it. Cider vinegar, a favourite additive said to help fight worms and other parasites, can make sour crop worse.
- Give the bird a small amount of plain bio-yoghurt containing ‘friendly bacteria’ on a daily basis. The evidence for the efficacy of these bacteria in helping chickens is anecdotal but the yoghurt certainly does no harm to chickens and may help, so it is worth giving it a try. And they like it.
- Try to loosen impacted material inside the crop. Using an eyedropper or syringe, open the chicken’s beak and get vegetable oil into the crop in very small quantities of no more than 5ml, once a day. Be careful to get the applicator right inside, beyond the tiny hole at the back of the bird’s tongue that leads directly to the lungs. Otherwise the bird could choke.
- Follow the oil with gentle massage of the crop in a downward direction, towards the belly, just for a few minutes. The crop can be massaged again later but no more than once every hour or two to avoid upsetting the bird, which would impact on its recovery chances.
The Last Resort Against Sour Crop
Vomiting can be induced preferably by a vet and with two people involved. It must be borne in mind that the shock and upset of this procedure can easily kill an already compromised chicken.
The procedure is as follows:
- Wrap the bird in a towel and gently tilt it forward (not back) so that its body is vertical to the floor and head close to the ground.
- Massage the crop down towards the beak.
- The beak may have to be opened to get the vomit out.
- Do this for no more than half a minute, maximum.
- Allow the bird to rest and attempt the procedure only once or twice.
- When the crop is partly or completely emptied, allow the bird to rest and keep it separate from the flock until a full recovery is confirmed.
If this does not work, a vet can (dependent upon how ill the chicken is) perform surgery to open the crop and manually remove the blocking materials.
