Baby Chick, Impacted Crop!!

[VivereIam]

Okay, so my 9 day old chick's crop is visibly swollen, and hard. I found it like that last night, and assumed her crop was just full, so I let her be thinking it might pass through or something, but it hasn't changed at all. I gave my chicks some tomato as a treat a few days ago, but all they have eaten has been Chick Starter. She hasn't been acting weird, but her poop is very dry. I think she has an impacted crop.

Any suggestions on what I should do?? Please Help!! Thank you

 

[Farmgirl805]

Hey there. I have a couple 10 day Olds that seem to have swollen crops. Would love to know what you did with the coconut oil and massage.

Hi.
Swollen - as in hard to the touch?

I used cold coconut oil (it’s easier to administer) and you want to break it up with a fork until you get small (and I do mean small) little balls of the coconut oil. You want to try to feed a few balls of the coco oil to each chick and get the benefits of the lubricating effect. You may have to gently use a fingernail to the side of the beak to get it to stay open long enough to get a bit of coco oil down the hatch. This method is less messy but if this isn’t working, you can use a baby medicine dropper / syringe without a needle to try melted - not hot - coco oil into the beak. If you can place the dropper next to the beak and get one drop of oil in at a time, that will work just the same.

Once the oil is in, you want to gently massage the crop upward until you feel it start to empty. It will go from hard like a golf ball to squishy like a balloon half full of water.

Take a look at this pic of chicken anatomy of the crop. Notice that the food has to go up and over a hump to get to the next parts of the digestive tract. You want to massage upward to help that “stuck food” and air, etc make its way up and over. It can take 20 mins or more of very slow gentle massage to get noticeable movement.
Keep your eye on them at further feedings to prevent this from happening again.
The good thing is, after your little ladies are hand held like this, they’ll be your best buddies later in life.

 

[Chickenchick11]

Do your chicks have access to chick grit? If they are eating anything besides chick starter than they need chick grit. Earlier this month I had a 1 year old hen with an sour/impacted crop, she has free choice access to grit but she still got a sour/impacted crop. So I massaged her crop and gave her some yogurt, BIG improvent in her condition, within 2 days she was absolutely fine. I hope this helps.



~Chickenchick11

 

[TwoCrows]

I have a little baby with the same problem! I am afraid to use the syringe because I don't want her to aspirate, but she is not drinking, so I am beginning to think I have no choice! Poor girly!

Hello there and welcome to BYC!

I had this happen with a 10 day old chick too. And I used this recipe on her to clear out the impaction. I have used this on yeast and grass impactions on adult birds with great success. If this is a piece of bedding, it may or may not respond, but it is worth a shot!! This comes from my article on Impacted and Sour Crops....



Doughy Crop:
What is a doughy Crop? If you find your bird has a crop full of what feels like bread dough...you can almost knead it from the outside...the contents are pliable and hold it's shape. And sometimes it is literally attached to the walls of the Crop. This is caused by a few things:

1. The Crop has become dehydrated due to a blockage and only the liquid is passing through the bird leaving all the food stuffs. The bird may also be very dehydrated from the lack of water.
2. This is a yeast infection and you are feeling the growing yeast. If you find these things early enough, one morning you might feel what seems like a marble sized ball in the bottom of the crop. The next morning the marble is the size of a peach pit. The day after that it is the size of a plum. In both cases you will be able to actually "knead" this wad of gummy dough material in the Crop.

So how do you get rid of it? I have seen this in two birds over my years. One was a week old chick that had something else going on with her at the time and when she finally did start to heal, she became dehydrated and had a gummy Crop. Another time I had a bird with a horrible yeast infection that started in her lungs and spread all through out her body. I believe she also had a bad case of worms at the time, which only compounded the situation. I tried hydrating with water and massaging it, (which only made this gummy mass worse), I tried hydration followed by vomiting and never did the thing budge. Especially with the second case where it was physically attached to the Crop walls.

I had heard of the following method to break this gummy ball down many many years ago when I raised Cockatiels. If you don't feed baby Cocketielsl properly, they can develop this gummy doughy Crop as well. I used the following recipe on both of these birds and within 24 to 36 hours, the entire mass had moved. You can find most if not all of these things in your spice pantry:

1/2 teaspoon Baking Soda (do NOT use baking powder)
1/2 teaspoon Ginger Powder (you can even use the contents of a human Ginger capsule)
1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon Powder
1/2 teaspoon Chili Powder
a squirt of Lemon Juice
2 Tablespoons of water

Mix this all together and use a syringe without a needle and suck up 1/4 to 1/2 ml at a time and squirt down the throat, in front under the tongue. Never give more than 1/2 ml at a time or you can aspirate the bird, having it go down the wrong pipe. Get this ENTIRE mixture down the throat. This will only take a few minutes to get it all down. Do this 3 times a day for one or two days and the mass will dissolve within 24 to 36 hours. If you know how to tube feed, you can give this one one fell swoop through a tube 3 times a day. Of course if you are dosing a very young chick, being that their Crops are so much smaller than adult birds, you will want to use half of this dosage or less depending on the size of the bird.

Of course this condition usually arises because some other medical issue is going on at the time. So make sure to address what is going on after you clear out the crop.

 

[Farmgirl805]

Really old post, I know but I'm going to give it a shot. I have a 8 day old chick who was sickly at 3 days. She's a White Crested Polish who is significantly smaller than my other chicks and not growing or thriving at all. that first night, I brought her back with a slurry of raw egg yolk, a few drops of Rescue Remedy, about 1/2 ml of weak green tea, and a pinch of powdered electrolite mixture (Saw it on the Chickenlandia YT channel). She perked back up but now she has what I think is Impacted Crop at day 8. We used the Olive Oil method last night along with about 3+ hours worth of crop massage. She made it thru the night last night, which surprised me. I've read here somewhere to use cold coconut oil as it is easier to "get down" so I'm going to try that instead if she's swollen back up again when I go home for lunch. I have a feeling it might be the pine bedding that's causing a blockage in her crop. She has never really fought for space in the brooder to eat. Because she was so weak in the beginning I was pulling her out and feeding her alone in a smaller container so she'd get some sort of protein. Now she still doesn't really fight for space at the feeder, but she does peck at the bedding a lot. I'm wondering if that's the problem. If anyone has any suggestions I'm open to them. I appreciate any help. I really don't want to lose this tiny little chick. She's adorable and I'm totally invested in her wellbeing.

 

[Farmgirl805]

Really old post, I know but I'm going to give it a shot. I have a 8 day old chick who was sickly at 3 days. She's a White Crested Polish who is significantly smaller than my other chicks and not growing or thriving at all. that first night, I brought her back with a slurry of raw egg yolk, a few drops of Rescue Remedy, about 1/2 ml of weak green tea, and a pinch of powdered electrolite mixture (Saw it on the Chickenlandia YT channel). She perked back up but now she has what I think is Impacted Crop at day 8. We used the Olive Oil method last night along with about 3+ hours worth of crop massage. She made it thru the night last night, which surprised me. I've read here somewhere to use cold coconut oil as it is easier to "get down" so I'm going to try that instead if she's swollen back up again when I go home for lunch. I have a feeling it might be the pine bedding that's causing a blockage in her crop. She has never really fought for space in the brooder to eat. Because she was so weak in the beginning I was pulling her out and feeding her alone in a smaller container so she'd get some sort of protein. Now she still doesn't really fight for space at the feeder, but she does peck at the bedding a lot. I'm wondering if that's the problem. If anyone has any suggestions I'm open to them. I appreciate any help. I really don't want to lose this tiny little chick. She's adorable and I'm totally invested in her wellbeing.

As an update, she had impacted crop, the coconut oil and upward massage of her crop worked. She’s now 2wks+4days old and thriving. Fighting for space at the feeder and growing. She’s significantly smaller than the rest of her friends but doing fine. No bullying so that’s great. To get her the added protein she needed during those first few days of weakness/ lethargy I fed her the yolk only of a hard boiled egg, mashed up. I fed her alone so she could get as much as she wanted. She still has some poo issues with sticking to her butt so I’m careful to keep her clean. I wouldn’t call it pasty butt necessarily but I keep her clean just the same. She’s fully devoted to her feed in the brooder now so I no longer give her hard boiled eggs- only if I give about 1/4 of the entire yolk to the entire flock, so she only occasionally gets some, and it’s now significantly less than before. I hope this helps someone.

 

[Mama_Arty]

As an update, she had impacted crop, the coconut oil and upward massage of her crop worked. She’s now 2wks+4days old and thriving. Fighting for space at the feeder and growing. She’s significantly smaller than the rest of her friends but doing fine. No bullying so that’s great. To get her the added protein she needed during those first few days of weakness/ lethargy I fed her the yolk only of a hard boiled egg, mashed up. I fed her alone so she could get as much as she wanted. She still has some poo issues with sticking to her butt so I’m careful to keep her clean. I wouldn’t call it pasty butt necessarily but I keep her clean just the same. She’s fully devoted to her feed in the brooder now so I no longer give her hard boiled eggs- only if I give about 1/4 of the entire yolk to the entire flock, so she only occasionally gets some, and it’s now significantly less than before. I hope this helps someone.

Hey there. I have a couple 10 day Olds that seem to have swollen crops. Would love to know what you did with the coconut oil and massage.

 

[Bethel3330]

I have not had this problem but I've seen olive oil suggested on here several times, maybe on little bits of bread? Good luck. I hope your baby gets better.

 

[Chicksahoyfarm]

Give her a bit of olive oil and massage her crop to try and break it up.

 

[VivereIam]

Okay thanks guys~ Should I isolate the affected chick and withdraw chick starter for the time being??