Help with a very slow or impacted crop please

Rhyara

Chirping
Sep 22, 2022
72
76
81
Mn
TLDR: Crop issues, she passes some material and has gotten empty, but when reunited back with her flock she got plugged up again. She is molting, I've read that slows their metabolism and can create crop issues, but offer no solutions.
There is NO apparent bad smell coming from her mouth.
The only thing I haven't tried is crop surgery and I won't do that myself unless absolutely necessary.
I tried offering papaya enzyme tablets (broken and crushed in food), but she refused. She also refuses to drink water with a bit of chlorhexadine. Both of these were recommended to me for treating impacted crop.
She was behaving normally with her flock both times before I took her in, inside she's more lethargic and sleepy, but that's probably because of a lack of fun activities for her...
If she doesn't start improving soon I'm going to start looking long distance for a vet that will take her in, no one nearby will.

11/6 Took her in in morning before she could eat or drink. Her crop wasn't large, but felt compact. Gave her only vegetable oil and then switched to mineral oil massaging her often.
She pooped out a fair amount of liquidy sand-poops. (Our land isn't dirt, it's all sand unfortunately so they have constant access to small grains of sand, I think this spot used to be a lake)

11/7 I gave her some yolk, water with poultry cell and mineral oil. She didn't seem to improve much throughout the day so we did an epsom slat flush. She got a good amount of poop out overnight but...

11/8 her crop felt about the same. I gave her some yolk, a bit of wetted high protein crumbles (unfortunately she is mid-molt at the moment), water with poultry cell and a lot more mineral oil. We ended the night with another epsom salt flush. About the same amount of poop as the previous day.

11/9 I had her with the poultry cell water, mineral oil and just a yolk.
Her crop felt well mixed every time I went to massage it.

11/10 withheld food and she seemed to be empty by the next morning

11/11 I gave her some oil, and let her rejoin her flock

(11/12, family issues, couldn't attend to the chickens)

11/13 her crop felt hard again in the morning, smaller than a baseball, bigger than a ping-pong ball So I took her back in.
Mineral oil and water all day, few poops. This time her poops don't seem particularly sandy.

11/14 PC, mineral oil and water, epsom salt flush, few poops

11/15 PC, mineral oil, water, some wet mash, few poops. I've taken to giving her a face mask diaper and letting her run around with me.

--11/16 PC, mineral oil, water. It feels like her crop is getting smaller, but most of the contents stick behind. She has liquidy poops with small solids

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
They have constant access to grit in a separate feeder, I have seen her go for it plenty of times. I'm thinking she may have an objection to the feed change (the kalmbach feather fixer for all the molting) and started avoiding it eating sand instead?
She's 1yr 6 months now.
She has had issues with being picky with feed in the past, upon looking at the camera she legit stopped eating (except treats) and ended up having a shell-less egg pop in her in early spring. She recovered and laid again a few times, but stopped a few weeks later and hasn't laid since.
I initially thought she may have eyp, but a couple months ago we saw lice on them and treated that, and her feathers lost from a rooster finally started coming back in then. Saw a roundworm in some poo, Nd treated that shortly after the lice. I'm guessing/hoping she just has a fragile system (her feet have always been the coldest too).

Thank you for your help. Our first loss, (a rescue that never warmed up to us and was very good at running away until she wasn't) happened last year to an impacted crop we didn't catch in time, so I'm extra worried about Lizzie here. She's one of my sweetest babies, is incredibly needy, and demands snuggles. She is precious to me.
 
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Thank you for responding 💕
I have the save a chick probiotic, I'll try that when she wakes up (just got dark) is that okay, or should I also get some Greek yogurt?

I've read that thread a few times and unfortunately doesn't really mention when and how food should be reintroduced and aftercare?
(That link was very helpful for when one of my girls had sour crop last year, and I adopted a girl with pendulous crop and followed the guide to make a bra until one from a pro was delivered 😊)

Most sites say withhold food and water for 24h, but don't go into it beyond that :(
 

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