Imprezznu
In the Brooder
Brand new chicken mom here and need some advice please! We got 6 baby chicks from Wilco last Wednesday and they were all active and doing great. We set up a brooder for them in a 27 gallon tote, put paper towels down along with some straw, a brooder plate, food (chick starter w/ chick grit) and water. They were good for days. I added chick grit each day because I read that if they had straw (which they love to kick and peck… and possibly eat) it was a good idea to add grit to prevent them from being stopped ups everything was good until 2 nights ago.
We noticed our Cornish cross chick Daisy and one of our barred rocks had full crops. We have them olive oil (as much as they’d let us, which wasn’t much) and waited 10 minutes and then gently massaged them. Yesterday morning Daisy was doing great, along with 4 of the others but I noticed the barred rock was hiding under the brooder and not active. I tried giving her more oil but she just wouldn’t take any. She was lethargic. I held her and just knew she wasn’t going to make it. She died 2 hours later and we were absolutely heart broken.
A bit later my daughter and I noticed that all of them had enlarged crops! We of course were very scared! I scoured the internet trying to find what might have caused it in all the chicks and saw that too much grit could be the culprit. I immediately took them off the grit and removed the food at night. This morning Daisy’s crop was still a little full but much better than last night (it was really hard and full last night). And the other 4 chicks had went down almost completely. However throughout the day Daisy’s got bigger again. We limited her food intake and only provided water to her in their area. We let her eat a little today and continued to massage her crop every few hours. After not letting her have food and only water her crop ballooned up and was all squishy from the water, so we removed the water for a little bit. They’re all still getting water we just aren’t letting her gorge on it. She’s still having poops and they look pretty normal (at least from what I’ve seen of baby chick poop so far). I’m just at a loss of what to do differently with her at this point. Has anyone else felt with impacted crop or sour crop in such a young chick? Thank you so much for any advice
** Also she’s acting completely normal up to this point **
Daisy is the yellow one. Best pic I have of her with the swollen crop. Her feathers are a little mangy looking since she’s had it but I think that’s due to the olive oil that ended up getting on her when she would fight getting some.
We noticed our Cornish cross chick Daisy and one of our barred rocks had full crops. We have them olive oil (as much as they’d let us, which wasn’t much) and waited 10 minutes and then gently massaged them. Yesterday morning Daisy was doing great, along with 4 of the others but I noticed the barred rock was hiding under the brooder and not active. I tried giving her more oil but she just wouldn’t take any. She was lethargic. I held her and just knew she wasn’t going to make it. She died 2 hours later and we were absolutely heart broken.
A bit later my daughter and I noticed that all of them had enlarged crops! We of course were very scared! I scoured the internet trying to find what might have caused it in all the chicks and saw that too much grit could be the culprit. I immediately took them off the grit and removed the food at night. This morning Daisy’s crop was still a little full but much better than last night (it was really hard and full last night). And the other 4 chicks had went down almost completely. However throughout the day Daisy’s got bigger again. We limited her food intake and only provided water to her in their area. We let her eat a little today and continued to massage her crop every few hours. After not letting her have food and only water her crop ballooned up and was all squishy from the water, so we removed the water for a little bit. They’re all still getting water we just aren’t letting her gorge on it. She’s still having poops and they look pretty normal (at least from what I’ve seen of baby chick poop so far). I’m just at a loss of what to do differently with her at this point. Has anyone else felt with impacted crop or sour crop in such a young chick? Thank you so much for any advice
** Also she’s acting completely normal up to this point **
Daisy is the yellow one. Best pic I have of her with the swollen crop. Her feathers are a little mangy looking since she’s had it but I think that’s due to the olive oil that ended up getting on her when she would fight getting some.