Chickens w buldge on Right side of chest - Photos Included -

[TheChips]

Ive been reading about this issue to educate myself on my current situation and for future occurrences. I read chickens get this bulge on the right side called a "Crop," thats where the food digests.

I inspect them -fully- every night before I settle them in for bed. Since I have never seen them have this, I feel a little concerned.

All 3 of my Isa Browns have them. They are around 10 weeks old.

I brought the oldest one inside to take some photos so I can get some suggestions on what to do. Here are my questions:

1. Is this normal? - I read it usually goes away by morning (the food digests during the night)
2. If this doesnt go away by morning, what should I do?
3. Do I give them each olive oil and if so how much? Do I massage it after?

Thank you in advance for taking the time to read this. - Monica

 

[AmpersatChick]

We are pretty new to chickens but we had a young roo who experienced impacted crop. The way it went down with him was that he started acting sick and then we felt his crop and realized it was super mooshy and impacted. I've seen our chickens since then have a visible lump and then it goes away without a problem. It is recommended that if they are eating something other than chicken food, free ranging etc that they have access at all times to grit. As far as taking care of the problem we force fed him a dropper of water, then massaged his crop while hanging him upside down (you can find youtube vids of people demonstrating this, ick) and force fed him Nutri-drench. We also had him away from other chicks just in case it was contagious. Hope this helps, like I said, I'm a newbie but that's my limited experience with it!

 

[TheChips]

Thank you for your response. All 3 of them have it. We have 5 (6 week) Cochin chickens in a separate coop but living in the same large shed. Theyre next door neighbors. I checked the Cochin chicks, they were fine.

i did notice my oldest Isa (Shown in the photos) has a runny nose. Can an impacted crop cause that?

Also, is it bad that they have access to their food all day long? They have their normal feed plus the scratch which is mixed in together in the same jar.

 

[AmpersatChick]

Mine have access to their feed all day too and water. We put it up at night just because it sits outside and we don't want to attract wild animals. We also put grit out for them all the time. I don't know about the runny nose. I've never noticed runny noses on ours, even the roo that had the impacted crop. But you should probably look into that.

 

[TheChips]

Hopefully the bulge will be gone tomorrow. If I have to give them a little bit of olive oil, i am at least confident they will let me to a certain extent. Ive been handling them since they were a day old. So theyre used to me doing things to them if need be

 

[Nambroth]

This looks like a normal, full crop to me. As they age, many chickens will eat 'till they are quite full. I have personally noticed that production breeds such as sex links and Isa Browns will eat quite a lot indeed! Anyhow, the crop should empty slowly over time. By morning, it should be reduced. The key is to check them before they even hop down off of the roost in the morning. They will begin to feed immediately and so if you check them after they fly down in the morning the crop might already have a bunch of food in it once again!

A few of my hens are real gluttons and will eat until their crops are even bigger than what you have photographed here. If the feed is good and they have access to enough room to mill around and be chickens, then it is arguably not harmful to free-feed them all day.

The crop is the first part of a bird's digestive system. Food is swallowed to the crop, where it is mixed with water and then slowly moved on into the body. The actual grinding occurs inside the gizzard.