Air-filled Crop Post-Crop Surgery? & other Complications

[khind]

How is she doing today?

Buffy's had a really good day! Her comb is nice and red, energy is great, talking more (like she used to before all this crop impaction stuff started so long ago)... Still very hungry though!
I decided last night to fast her for a day at least, until I could determine a next move. She was gurgling so much yesterday whenever she ate. When I checked on her in the a.m., she had a few nicely-formed stools, and even a good ol' cecal poop. I hadn't seen one of those from her in a long time.
The vet didn't get back with me in the a.m.., so I phoned in the afternoon. They said bring her in right after work.
The vet was stumped by her crop - he said it felt like it was full of air/gas. He told me to give her 1 mL / 12 hrs of a baking soda solution: 1 tsp/2 tsp water. (It wasn't until I got home that I discovered the human dosage is much, much weaker. While I was there I forgot to ask about trying simethicone (the ingredient in Gas- X), if it's safe for chickens, etc. Hopefully the baking soda will help. We'll check back in on Wed. (2 days).
Meanwhile, he told me to increase the frequency of the Reglan from 2 - 3x/day. He also Rx'd a round of Tylan (she just finished Baytril yesterday).
He said to fast her for another day, and then feed her only liquid foods after that for the next 7 days. I have some baby food I'd bought, trying to put some weight back on her, which he said was fine. After that, I'll use the bird liquid meal I ordered yesterday.
I Really hope we can get this crop shrunk down!

 

[Wyorp Rock]

I'm glad to hear Buffy is still hanging in there!

I hope she will get past this too

 

[khind]

Oh, one thing I just saw on the Mayo clinic website: Wait 1-2 hrs after using baking soda for therapeutic purposes to take any other medication, as it may not work as well. I gave Buffy her Reglan and antibx 30 minutes later. Ugh.

 

[khind]

Well, 2 doses (12 hrs apart) of the baking soda solution had Buffy drinking loads of water (not surprising), with no crop shrinkage. I was originally supposed to not take her back to the vet until tomorrow (Wed), but I figured I'd check in over the phone & ask if he was expecting to see something else or what.
He said his objective with that cocktail was to try to change her pH, as an experiment; he's hoping to figure out what's causing this bloat/expansion. If the baking soda had worked, he'd have an answer.
So I asked him about Simethicone. He said, sure, try that. He didn't have a suggestion about how much I should give, so I'm going to try something. I got some infant liquid product. The lowest dose listed is 20 mg (in 0.3 mL). Since Buffy can't weigh more than 1.4 lbs or so right now, that's what I'm going to try.
She came off her 2-day fast tonight. I fed her some turkey w/ carrots baby food (mushed the carrots so it was all a puree), and I'm about to give her the simethicone.
Despite fasting again today, she's still been looking and acting great today (drinking all that water kind of concerned me though, but fingers crossed...).
She's also just become Much more difficult to dose with medicine the past couple of days - she gets really ornery about it! She's definitely looking more like her old self before she had any health issue!

 

[khind]

I ended up giving Buffy what amounted to 67 mg of simethicone. It did nothing for her crop.
I still couldn't find the correct dosage listed anywhere. However, I ran across a couple of accounts of people having success giving the adult-strength GasX to their chicken. So I looked up the mg in GasX. Regular (non-extra-strength) is 125 mg. Well, I gave Buffy what amounted to 133.3 mg. I really hope that was not too much...
I'll post an update. If she seems fine, but if there's still no change, we'll be heading back to the vet to experiment with something else. Other than this crop, she still looks and sounds much better.
I also broke her fast last evening. Baby food (turkey with carrots) until some bird powder feed comes in the mail - liquid food for 7 days.

 

[Wyorp Rock]

I ended up giving Buffy what amounted to 67 mg of simethicone. It did nothing for her crop.
I still couldn't find the correct dosage listed anywhere. However, I ran across a couple of accounts of people having success giving the adult-strength GasX to their chicken. So I looked up the mg in GasX. Regular (non-extra-strength) is 125 mg. Well, I gave Buffy what amounted to 133.3 mg. I really hope that was not too much...
I'll post an update. If she seems fine, but if there's still no change, we'll be heading back to the vet to experiment with something else. Other than this crop, she still looks and sounds much better.
I also broke her fast last evening. Baby food (turkey with carrots) until some bird powder feed comes in the mail - liquid food for 7 days.

I'm glad she's looking and sounding better.

I have not seen dosing for Simethicone so couldn't say if that's right or not.
Hopefully you'll see improvement in the next few days.

Thank you for the update, please do let me know how Buffy is getting along.

 

[khind]

I'm glad she's looking and sounding better.

I have not seen dosing for Simethicone so couldn't say if that's right or not.
Hopefully you'll see improvement in the next few days.

Thank you for the update, please do let me know how Buffy is getting along.

Thank you.
It's been a long time since I posted, but here's what's developed since:
It turns out there was actually food in her crop. Even though Buffy has been stooling and looking good color-wise and behaving with vigor and personality, she's still storing a lot of food in her crop (the crop gets really large). In fact, her crop developed a hole near the stitches - twice (the second time was yesterday, after being re-cleaned out and re-stitched). And yet she still looks and acts great. However, this can't go on forever, of course. We have to find a way to bring this crop down. Reglan hasn't done it, not so far anyway. I tried to make a tighter crop bra from a tube sock to see if that would help, but I had the hardest time getting it on her without feeling like I was going to break her wings, so I had to give up (I used the written descriptions I could find here in this forum). My vet is perplexed; he said today that he's never had a chicken's crop fill up like this after surgery. He Rx'd Tylan (a second time) today, saying he's trying it to see if it will help. He didn't want to try Reglan again (we finished the bottle originally prescribed); he's really hoping her body can right itself so she won't need it.
I might need to post this as a whole new topic as well.
I'll be taking her back to the vet tomorrow (Saturday) because today, this 2nd time her crop opened/leaked, the vet simply added staples, not wanting to open her up and stitch her a 3rd time, but a couple hours after we got home, some food leaked right out of it again...
She really likes hanging around with me, but she Needs to get back out to a regular chicken life. She needs to be able to be around dirt, rocks, and plants (and other chickens) again. She's been on a soft/liquid diet for the past month.