The internet is a wonderful thing. Using this forum, wikipedia, and numerous other websites I've taught myself a lot about chicken health. She had gotten sour crop when she was only about 5-6 weeks old. Our grass had gotten too long and the girls had just been moved outside so they were discovering all the new kinds of stuff to eat. Ely has a fixation with long grass. I noticed her crop was very enlarged one morning and remembered reading about sour crop. So I started trial and error with remedies found online. Unfortunately we had a major error the first time and put pine shavings in her quarantine cage. If you've ever seen a dog with an upset stomach you may notice they do things like eat random stuff, eat grass or lick the floor trying to make themselves feel better. Well she ate a ton of bedding and ended up with an impacted crop and was stuck in the cage about a week with daily treatments of water, olive oil mixed feed, crop massages, etc.
Her crop never totally went back to normal after that. It's always been noticeably pendulous. It could be a genetic thing handed down to her or it could have been from it being enlarged for too long and permanently stretched it out. I assume it was the first and that's how she went sour the first time, the shape of her crop made it difficult to handle all the grass she gorged on. I have to consider that it's also my fault for letting the grass get too long or "letting" her eat the pine shavings. However she got like that I want to make sure she has the best life possible.
I always have an eye on her. Now that she's laying she's much easier to catch to cop a crop feel and make sure it's not in a bad state. Usually it's pretty noticeable even from a distance that she's having problems. She gives signs like neck twitching trying to adjust food in her crop etc. I found the crop bras on websites while researching more permanent solutions to her issue. I have read about making them out of men's socks, which I may attempt as I'm afraid the elastic bands on some of the ones people sell online might rub and cause her pain. I just hate to think she'll always be uncomfortable wearing one. I don't mind babying her when she "goes sour". As I mentioned before sometimes I make her vomit for a few minutes, she clears out totally and then she doesn't have the issue again for many weeks. About every other month she gets one that's worse than usual or that I don't catch early enough and she ends up in the cage.
I used to feed all the girls kefir or yogurt every morning because of Ely's issue but switched to fermented feed hoping it would do just as well. I don't think her crop issue occurred any more frequently than when she was eating yogurt every day so I think it's working OK. When she's in quarantine she gets ACV in her water but I don't give it daily like many people do because I waste a ton when I change the water bucket in the run every day. Maybe when I finally get my PVC drip feeder working properly I'll start adding ACV since I won't be changing the water every day.
The whole in-patient treatment has made her a very cuddly chicken. She's my lap girl and actually seems to like the crop massages. Sometimes it looks like she's going to fall asleep during it.
