Hi everyone! I wanted to post about our little bantam and hopefully offer some encouragement for others who have chickens with crop injuries. She had a bad injury almost 3 weeks ago and we were leaning towards putting her out of her misery, as we really didn't think she would survive and we thought it would be a long, slow death.
However, she was acting relatively normally, so we decided to give her a chance, and so far things are looking pretty good. Here's what happened:
We had set up a little enclosure in one corner of our run for our broody hens, and one evening our bantam, Mini, must have been sitting too close to the edge and an animal must have reached through and grabbed her (we have since put a board on that side so it can't happen again). The following day, we noticed she was acting a little off, and we discovered a gaping hole in her chest. We couldn't tell whether there were organs torn open or not, so we rinsed her off, put a bunch of Neosporin on her and wrapped her in gauze, gave her some electrolytes, and isolated her while we tried to figure out what to do. After two or three days, we removed the gauze to change it and assess the damage. Here's what we saw:
Poor Mini's crop had been torn open. If you look closely, you can see a piece of grass she had just eaten, coming back out through the hole in her crop. When we removed the gauze, there was food in it that had oozed out through the hole. But she was still pooping, so she must have been getting SOME food into her belly... So we decided to give her a chance. It seemed like the gauze had been holding things together a bit so that she could still get some food/water down, but it was also getting soaked and seemed unsanitary.
So we made her a little bra out of duct tape (the sticky side was covered with tape so it didn't stick to her) to hold her together without soaking up her food/water leakage
. We peeked under the bra every couple of days without removing it and found that the food that leaked out was forming a plug. It didn't have any smells to suggest rotting food or infection, and she was acting normal, so we just kept checking on her every so often. At this point, she had rejoined the flock because with the duct tape bra, they weren't able to peck it off or reinjure her, and they weren't picking on her at all. We gave her the bra on June 15 and here she is today, 15 days later:
There were some balls of old, dried-up crop leakage inside the duct tape when we removed it. Most of the gash in her chest has healed up, and she still has that bit of dry stuff plugging the hole. I think I'll leave the bra off for a day or so and see if she's able to clean it off of herself. It's stuck pretty good and I don't want to pull at it, but I don't want the skin to fully heal over with it stuck inside her, either.
I'll update when it's all over, but right now it's looking promising
However, she was acting relatively normally, so we decided to give her a chance, and so far things are looking pretty good. Here's what happened:
We had set up a little enclosure in one corner of our run for our broody hens, and one evening our bantam, Mini, must have been sitting too close to the edge and an animal must have reached through and grabbed her (we have since put a board on that side so it can't happen again). The following day, we noticed she was acting a little off, and we discovered a gaping hole in her chest. We couldn't tell whether there were organs torn open or not, so we rinsed her off, put a bunch of Neosporin on her and wrapped her in gauze, gave her some electrolytes, and isolated her while we tried to figure out what to do. After two or three days, we removed the gauze to change it and assess the damage. Here's what we saw:
Poor Mini's crop had been torn open. If you look closely, you can see a piece of grass she had just eaten, coming back out through the hole in her crop. When we removed the gauze, there was food in it that had oozed out through the hole. But she was still pooping, so she must have been getting SOME food into her belly... So we decided to give her a chance. It seemed like the gauze had been holding things together a bit so that she could still get some food/water down, but it was also getting soaked and seemed unsanitary.
So we made her a little bra out of duct tape (the sticky side was covered with tape so it didn't stick to her) to hold her together without soaking up her food/water leakage
. We peeked under the bra every couple of days without removing it and found that the food that leaked out was forming a plug. It didn't have any smells to suggest rotting food or infection, and she was acting normal, so we just kept checking on her every so often. At this point, she had rejoined the flock because with the duct tape bra, they weren't able to peck it off or reinjure her, and they weren't picking on her at all. We gave her the bra on June 15 and here she is today, 15 days later:There were some balls of old, dried-up crop leakage inside the duct tape when we removed it. Most of the gash in her chest has healed up, and she still has that bit of dry stuff plugging the hole. I think I'll leave the bra off for a day or so and see if she's able to clean it off of herself. It's stuck pretty good and I don't want to pull at it, but I don't want the skin to fully heal over with it stuck inside her, either.
I'll update when it's all over, but right now it's looking promising
it was probably about 4-5 months between the injury and the plug finally falling off and healing up.
