I'm so glad to hear she's doing better!
Did you ever find antibiotics?
For my learning, could you tell me how you did surgery?
The only antibiotics available here are the injectable kind of penicillin and interestingly when I spoke to the chicken lady at my local grange she told me a couple of things that I did not know: chickens run at a very hot temp normally, between 102 and 105 degs. so it made sense that my hen felt hot to me and because of this high temp, bacterial infections
usually have a hard time taking hold. She recommended continuing with the watery yogurt and egg yolk along with some soft scrambled egg to build up the good flora in her gut which the antibiotics would also kill. I have held off on giving her any drugs as she seems to be doing well aside from walking backwards in an attempt to rid herself of her sock bandage/bra.
The surgery was surprisingly easy. Make sure you have two people, this would be very hard on your own but I know folks have done it. Make sure you have all the bits and pieces ready: scalpel, bottle of betadine, lidocaine, cotton swabs, clean water and a syringe for flushing the crop and some pincers or tweezers for getting all the stuff out, and preferably some sutures and a hemostat. We used Vetbond adhesive but it was quite tricky to get both the crop and then the outer skin cleanly reattached, sutures would have easier and without the potential of splitting away.
Place a nice clean sock over the hens head so she cant see and freak out, they become quite docile at this point. You may have to cut away feathers around the incision area, we did not as her crop was naked. Clean the area really well with the betadine and then apply the lidocaine cream and wait for several minutes to deaden the area a bit. Make the incision going from the top of the crop down about an inch and a half. I know some folks do the incision like a smiley face across the crop but this seems counter intuitive to me as the wound would constantly be pulling against gravity to heal so we went the other way. Cut through the skin first and then through the crop, remove debris with pincers make sure you have a syringe or turkey baster with clean water to flush all the remaining goo and yellow liquid out of the crop. When done, seal the interior wound and then the exterior wound, clean everything again with betadine and make sure the hen cannot get to the wound by inventing some kind of bra or sling. Have this ready before you start the surgery so you can just slip her into it. Chickens heal amazingly quickly so the wound should be healed up completely in a couple of days. Voila!!! This is not for the faint of heart however, the stuff, as you can see above, is pretty disgusting and there is blood involved. Not much but enough to cause alarm if not prepared.
) I cut off the toe and split the sides open so the top of the sock sits loosely around her neck and the body of the sock covers the crop and goes over her back with her wings through the slits (yes, she is very thin). She cannot get to the incision this way as I was worried she would cannibalize it if she could reach it. The crop itself is on the warm side but it is pink and not bruised looking as I thought it might be. She has access to water with vitamins in it in the dog crate but I have not seen her take any. Should I force her to have some with a syringe? Thanks for the interest.
