Smoky wasn't doing well. Saw fluid building in her chest area. Needed to open her back up. Hard to explain, but her crop was so stretched and humongous that it seemed to be in two sections and there was more stuff in one of them. That is now out and completely clean. No way it should have been in there, but today, she wasn't bleeding and it went better. She is in the brooder under a heat lamp. She may die, poor thing has been through the wringer, but she would have died with all that mess in there had we left it. Crop massage would have been completely useless in her situation.
That is one strong hen, but this time, we didn't let her stand up after surgery. Placed her still wrapped in the towel under the heat lamp and she is sleeping, but unwrapped it a bit so if she did try to stand, she wouldn't hurt herself. If she does just pass on out, at least we tried. Feel like we failed another one of our girls, though. I think that part of the reason this surgery might not work is her pendulous crop condition she's had for years. It has absolutely no muscle tone anyway and was particularly difficult to clean out. It's one of the reasons I won't be raising BBS Orps anymore, the crop issues we've had with 3/4 of the hens.
When crop massage is futile, the only choices are to take the hen to the vet, if you could even find one to do it and who wouldn't charge you major bucks, or euthanize the bird immediately, or open her up yourself. It's just cruel to let a bird slowly starve to death and do nothing, IMO.
