Chicks with hard crops

[mkpovak]

As we were cleaning out the brooder today I was handling all of the chicks like I normally do and I noticed all of them have very hard crops, about the size of a regular bouncy ball but not that solid. Should I worry? They are about 4ish maybe 5ish weeks old (hard to say the guy we bought them from said they were 2 weeks old but when I showed pictures here most folks agreed they were probably 4ish weeks old)

 

[Dar]

take the food out for the night.. allow access to water and check on them in the morning...... at this time of night my chickens crops are pretty full

if they are still like that in the morning then I would say its time for concern

 

[mkpovak]

I will go down and do that right now. Thank you!

 

[HathawayHens]

It's probably nothing to worry about. The crop gets full of food as they eat, then gradually empties. Mine all have large crops after they have been eating.

 

[mkpovak]

Just wanted to report back that I went and gave them back their food this morning at 5am (they were downstairs making a racket for their food). Checked them all out before I put the food back and their crops were nice and soft. Silly chickens think they are piggies with all they ate yesterday. They were very happy to have their food back! I'm glad I was worried, we lost the "runt" the other day so I was worried we would lose the rest and I'm not sure how our 5 year old would handle that.

 

[Dar]

glad to hear they are ok... you have lil piggies instead of chicks