Sour crop gettting better but she is still not doing good.

[Kmcschoolee]

I think her sour crop is getting a little better. It does not feel full and I cannot smell the sour as bad , I have treated with fluconazole for a couple days. This is a couple droppings and i found a piece of straw in one. She has noly pooped 2 times in over a day. I was going to treat for coccidiosis but since I found the single piece of straw I wonder if that is the problem. She does not feel impacted at all and her crop is not full and watery like it was a couple days ago. Is this dropping normal for a chicken not eating and only drinking or does it look like there is a parasite? If normal how do I get things moving lower down so she will eat? Like if her gizzard is blocked. She is still drinking at this time. I need to get her to eat. She layed an egg yesterday so I know that is not the problem.

 

[Aunt Angus]

I'm sorry she's not doing well.

In my experience, spur crop is often a symptom of another problem (impacted gizzard, worms, infection, reproductive disorder, cancer, etc.).

Has she lost a lot of weight?

When was the last time she laid?

Does her abdomen feel swollen, like it's full of water?

 

[Kmcschoolee]

I just went out and she is smelling sour again. I did ivermectin drops on her neck to worm her yesterday. She layed yesterday so I know she's not egg bound. Yes she's losing weight. I have lost a couple other chickens to sour/ impacted crop. I'm about to give up.

 

[Kmcschoolee]

I just went out and she is smelling sour again. I did ivermectin drops on her neck to worm her yesterday. She layed yesterday so I know she's not egg bound. Yes she's losing weight. I have lost a couple other chickens to sour/ impacted crop. I'm about to give up.

I haven't been able to get the monistat cream to work on a chicken. I just end up having to put them down. I really want to save her. Does the dropping in the picture look normal

 

[Aunt Angus]

The droppings don't look normal to me, but if she's having crop issues, they won't look normal

You might try a different antifungal cream. There are a few different meds out there, just read the actual medicine.

Any other symptoms? If more than one chicken has had this, I would start to wonder if it's not related to something contagious or their feed.

 

[Aunt Angus]

And I was thinking reproductive disorder, but not if she laid that recently.

 

[Kmcschoolee]

And I was thinking reproductive disorder, but not if she laid that recently.

I will try a stronger med. Maybe a3 day suppository. Should I treat for coccidiossis

 

[ScarletSun]

Did your hen recover from her illness? My husband and I just had to have one of our beloved hens put to sleep yesterday due to something similar but it sounds like your girl might be doing a little better than ours was. We know exactly what happened to ours because we luckily have a wonderful avian vet locally and we ended up taking her for an impacted crop surgery a few weeks ago and then just to be sure, we had a necropsy done at the UC Davis veterinary lab after the euthanasia. As I said, we had the obstruction (she consumed a bunch of straw) removed from our hen's crop but she had more straw material stuck in her GI tract. Nothing could pass the obstruction so she couldn't poop (we only saw white urea and very little feces, similar to your picture) and she would eat very little. It sounds like the crop of your hen isn't impacted but I'll tell you what happened with ours. After the crop surgery she perked up immediately. The avian vet had her on 3 oral medications (antibiotics, metaclopramide and lactulose) and near the end when she started to backslide we switched to intramuscular injections of metaclopramide and oral papaya enzymes once we realized the medicine was not getting thru the obstruction. It sounds like it's possible your girl may have an obstruction further down but it may not be as impacted as ours was.

If you don't have a vet as an option for you I'll share what our vet told us can help a hen pass an obstruction - papaya enzymes and metamucile, twice a day. You use the human chewable papaya enzyme that you can get at the drugstore, one chewable pill mashed up and mixed with 1cc water given orally every 12 hours - same for the metamucile... Mix it up and give 1cc twice a day. Make sure you get the real sugar variety and not sugar-free. Keep doing that until she has a normal poop. If she's not eating and losing weight, you should consider keeping her inside or warm because they burn a lot of energy trying to keep warm.

The last thing the vet said we should check for in the necropsy is metal poisoning from lead or zinc oxide. She said it's a very off chance but she has seen it once before and it caused the same symptoms as an obstruction. She noted that if the chickens had access to areas where lead based paint might be in the soil or if she could have picked up a piece of hardware. This was not the case for us but something for you to consider.

I hope this helped but mostly I hope your hen is fully recovered or improving!