Correlation between molting and extremely slow crop?

[JulieHei]

Hi! This is the THIRD time THIS YEAR I am experiencing slow crop in molting chickens. The poop consists of 95% clear water and 5% green/turquoise strings of food/slime. I am concerned that they will loose a lot of weight and become sick. It is like the crop is barely functioning. When they eat, the food uses two days to get out of the crop. When I dealth with this earlier this year I gave the chicken a lot of crop massages and foods like water melon and papaya. And in addition lots of probiotics. The crop slowly started functioning again, I dont think it was impacted or sour, only slow. I am dealing with this again now, with two molting chickens. I don’t understand, is there a reason why this happens to the molting chickens? Do I have to do all this extra stuff for them like keeping them isolated, give extra probiotics/enzymes and so on? Or will the crop start working again on it’s own after the molt? Would be interesting to read other experiences regarding this issue!

 

[Shadrach]

Good observation but possibly wrong conclusion and remedy.
A significant number of chickens go off their regular feed when moulting. For most, it's not that they don't eat given the opportunity to forage for what they believe they need, they just don't eat as much and tend to drink more. This would seem to suggest that something is lacking in commercial feed for a moulting chicken.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...off-their-usual-feed-when-they-moult.1498056/

With ranging and free ranging chickens this is rarely a health problem. They return to normal feeding behaviour once the worst of the moult is over.

Offering alternative foodstuffs is a partial solution for contained chickens.
More important is one shouldn't handle moulting chickens. They fend contact extremely uncomfortable due to pin feather sticking out at odd angles and there is a risk of breaking an early pin feather which will bleed if left unattended.

 

[Winchikn]

I am also noticing this right now with my flock. Seven out of 9 are molting and as of this morning I have 2 molters with slow/doughy/partially impacted crops. There are several threads on this topic so it seems to be a correlation others have observed.

I'm curious about the food connection - my flock is on 18% layer pellet - maybe there are supplements that might help ease digestion during molting.

I am hoping that things will resolve as they move through their molt. The interventions definitely seem to cause a lot of stress when even my cuddliest hen does not want to be held!

 

[JulieHei]

I am also noticing this right now with my flock. Seven out of 9 are molting and as of this morning I have 2 molters with slow/doughy/partially impacted crops. There are several threads on this topic so it seems to be a correlation others have observed.

I'm curious about the food connection - my flock is on 18% layer pellet - maybe there are supplements that might help ease digestion during molting.

I am hoping that things will resolve as they move through their molt. The interventions definitely seem to cause a lot of stress when even my cuddliest hen does not want to be held!

Interesting! I guess there are some kind of correlation - not for every chicken but maybe some of them are more prone to getting it than others?