HELP-- I think my girl has a slow crop? --update, we have an egg! now what...?

Huge, squishy crop. This morning Cordelia's sluggish, blinking and staggering- she was fine yesterday when they were out all day free ranging. She laid an egg yesterday that was perfectly normal, ate and drank, got up to the roost by herself... I can't get to a vet. What can I do ta a) work out what's wrong b) help her?



Thank you...

Her crop seems overly full and there's a slight whistle to her breathing- is it impacted crop?? Not sure what to do
Would photos help? Is anyone awake?

I have her inside with me. It's morning, so she should have an empty crop, but it's full. It's squishy rather than hard. She's done a couple of very watery poops, mostly white with some dark green, and she appears to have trouble breathing. Her eyes are clear, but she's keeping them half shut a lot of the time. Help please, I don't know what to do and I can't get her to a vet- I live in Spain, and nobody will answer the phone on a Sunday !!

Just show picture they could help
and put paracetamol and sugar in water It might
help
thnxs

Thanks. We've given her some paracetamol in water, massaged her crop a little and she's definitely perked up a bit. These videos were from a while ago- she's since settled down, is even preening herself a bit. She's drinking water and she's had a little natural yoghurt and a little olive oil- we started off having to administer it but she's actually drinking and even eating (yoghurt) by herself. She's still very tired.


Oh- it's worth mentioning, she has a trimmed beak . Here in Spain it's common practice- we haven't bought any more chickens that have had the procedure done, as it just seems so inhumane. It seems to be growing back a bit but I don't think she'll ever have a normal chicken beak



(warning, poop picture below)

Here she is, looking a lot less distressed. She won't sit down, but she's been preening and drinking water. She wants to eat but I don't think she should have anything more put in that crop! I'm getting conflicting information on what to do for her- massage her crop to help it work through, or make her vomit it up?

She hasn't pooped for almost five hours.... I'm really worried...

Well, we ended up just trying massage and feeding her olive oil to loosen up whatever was trapped in there- she'd take it on top of some natural yoghurt. Gradually, she looked less and less panicked, though she still wasn't pooping- and then I wondered, what if she's holding it because she thinks she's in a nestbox? (We had her in a cardboard box with some straw.) I decided to try taking her down to where the other girls are to see if she'd go. Almost immediately, poop! Small, but relatively normal consistency. I didn't want to risk her eating grass but she looked much happier being able to wander around, so I moved the tractor out onto some ground without grass (most of our land here is very, very dry clay) and let her back in with the other girls. She seemed to be pecking at grit, which was interesting. Our spanish neighbour who keeps chickens came over to give her a looking over for us. We told him about her overstuffed crop and I even asked him if Cordelia might have an unformed egg blocking things or something, but he told us there wasn't anything worth worrying about, that she was fine- though of course having a stuffed crop just before bedtime IS perfectly normal for a chicken! If he'd seen her this morning, he would probably have had something else to say, I really thought we might have to euthanise her...

Anyway, a little relieved if perplexed by our neighbour's judgement I decided to let her wander about being a chicken for a bit- it seemed to be having a calming effect. Her tail raised, she wandered around a bit, like a lethargic, slightly dozy version of herself. I kept an eye on here as she did a few more very small poops, but the surprise was at bedtime. Our ladies usually take themselves off to bed, and I thought I'd let Cordelia join them if she felt up to jumping onto the roost, and then take her gently after dark back into observation- I thought it might help re-integration once she's feeling better if things seemed a bit more normal to the other two.

WELL. I opened the door to the tractor, and Cordelia wandered back to the coop where she jumped in the nestbox and started making 'I'm doing an egg and it's kind of hard work' noises! I had wondered, but Juan had seemed so sure- I was prepared for her to just strain a lot and not produce anything, but after maybe half an hour, she laid a perfectly average size egg. Afterwards, she sat in the box looking pretty much exhausted.



I let her rest for a bit there but I felt I should still take her in for individual observation and to make sure she didn't just gorge herself on the grains available to the other ladies. I took her egg in with me- it has a strange red speckling at the fatter end, which has me mildly concerned. The egg to the right of it in the picture above was laid by Henrietta a few days before she died. They're not quite the same (Henrietta's eggs have quite raised dark red freckles all over them) but they're similar enough that I'm a little worried. We never found out what happened to Henrietta. I don't know if anyone knows what this kind of egg means?

I've got Cordelia in with me now. She did a fairly large, very watery poop, and the green bit was full of grass... I'm hoping this means she can pass the rest of what's in her crop through before she gets anything blocked by another egg (if she'll be manufacturing one anyway considering how unwell she was today.) She's done more poop since, all very watery but I think that's probably because we've been feeding her olive oil on yoghurt to try and lubricate her passageways. I've got her on homemade electrolyte solution to try and help make sure she isn't dehydrated, but her crop is still so full I'm a little worried about feeding her anything more solid. Any advice on this?

Any advice on how to help her recover? I'm prepared to help massage the rest through if she needs me to, but it seems to me like she might need more than just olive oil and yoghurt to keep her going? Tomorrow's a Monday so I can probably get to the chicken feed store and/or the vet...