crop issue, loosing weight, and runny pooh

[embrown]

oOkay, DH says he is on board and will stop at the vets on the way home tonight to get more sutures. I hope she will give us more. She ate scrambled egg this late A.M. and just a while ago I gave her a tablespoon of yogurt with some shreded cheese on-top. She ate the cheese and saved the yogurt, but she is eating that now. She is still quiet and still but not yet droopy. We have some things we must do, but we will open her up again tonight by clipping the sutures, make a bigger hole so DH or I can stick our finger in and really scoop out her crop. Then we will stitch up the crop and the outer skin again. I am thankful that she let us do it yesterday, so it will not feel so bad to try again. I wonder what we will find. It is strange that it seems to be green grass, not straw or anything weird. But, I guess there is just more in there as that crop was definitely still hard, although smaller this morning and still yet now. Here's praying tonights adventure gives her the help she needs. I think we were just too scared that we would hurt her or pull too much of the crop out, or pull out something that would permanently hurt her. I will also flush with the saline, I guess I assumed that if the full crop could back up into the wind pipe, so might saline, but I will try harder to wash out the whole crop. We had her lying on her left side wrapped in a towel and that seemed to work, so we will just go for the repeat performance but with more crop probing. She is such a good girl.

 

[viktoriacl]

Cant wait to hear how it goes! Any update yet?

 

[WiscoChiko]

Hope all is going well!!

 

[embrown]

Just got home from running the necessary family errands. Will put the kids to bed and then start the process. I want to make sure the little ones are not around to startle the chicken or the guy holding the skelpo. I will update as soon as we are done. She has gone to the perch, her eyes are still bright, her comb and waddles are nice and red. So, I think she still has some spunk in her to pull through. The box smells like chicken pooh but we see nothing so I know that her systems still are working but no nourishment is occurring. My DH got disssolvable sutures
for the inside of the crop itself, from the vet, plus the silk ones for the outside layer if we do not have enough of the desolvable to do both. Please pray for us and our sweet hen.

 

[embrown]

Okay. We made a good choice to go back into her crop. We got almost as much stuff as the first time. There was more grass, some...not much...straw, apple, egg, and the whole thing smelled like yogurt. We noticed that the area of her incision was quite warm as we started to remove the sutures. We got together our sterilized hemostats, tweezers, skalpel, scissors: put on sergical gloves; used betadine, wiped the area; pulled out some feathers that were in the way and got to work. She did NOT like us cutting the outer sutures but she calmed as I stroked her neck. Again, she was on a "blue pad" wrapped in a clean beach towel, a towel was over her head I kept a light hold on her and my husband did the work. She did not mind the removal of the sutures on the actual crop but it had already started to heel and the two incisions did not line up, probably due to muscle activity. it was hard to find the last cut in the crop. But we did, and we removed the sutures and cut the hole a bit larger so Dh's gloved finger could reach in.

For anyone doing this, it appears that you really have to reach/dig in the crop. As you get down to the exit point toward the gizzard you can feel the outlet and the muscle spazums so you know you are there. He really had to probe around. There was a lot still in there even though it had gotten smaller it really needs to be flat. Once we were sure it was all out, he put in saline and more stuff came out with the liquid and he probed again and there was still some strands of grass/straw. So, he washed with saline again and still more loosened up, not a lot, but a few blades of grass and something that was the texture of apple or celery. He used the saline a third time and that seemed to be about it. He sewed up the crop using dissolvable sutures, it was not tough to use and again we had a back cutting curved nedle. He made extra sure to keep the stitches tight and close together. He put a bit of betadine over the sutures and that was after rinsing the whole area really well with saline. Then there was the closing up of the outside. That cut was much bigger, and the chicken's skin is tough and hard to put the needle through, but it did go well. We decided to just continue with the dissolvable sutures since we had plenty left. After it was all closed we rinsed with saline and wiped the area with sterile gauze and put on the antibiotic cream. I will remember to put that on more tomorrow.

this time I am going to keep her off everything until morning. Then, maybe I will give her water with electrolites. I will hold off food longer since it did not seem like the egg got processed and I want the wound to heel a bit before making the crop muscles work to process the food. I can not hold off food for long as she is kind of weak, down to almost 3 LBs, and I want her to not get worse. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated. Also, I want to know thoughts about giving her an antibiotic just because of the incision being hot before we started and then having to go back in there, plus all that junk was in there holding potential bacterial risk. If you think I should use antibiotics, what would you recommend, dosage and for how long. If not, what else can I do. Should I cover the wound, and how?

We all came through, but I am worried, I think having to go in a second time was hard on her and us.

If anyone tries this, please be dilegent the first time. I am telling you, you have to really probe deep, and thorough. I am shocked at how much it takes to get it all out and her crop was only about gulf ball sized. My husband felt he did a good job the first time using tweezers and hemostats, but I believe you really have to use your gloved finger and systematically search every inch of the crop and then rinse and check again and again.

Also, I would suggest two people as she did get upset a few times and it was helpful to have me holding and stroking her to calm her. She was completely calm the first time but I think she was sore and nervous the second time, another good reason to only have to do it once.

Right now, I am worried about her low energy, wobbley leggs, and her comb that now looks a bit floppy, but still red.

BTW, her crop is now, very flat, which made stitching up a bit more difficult because the skin contracted pulling feathers near to the incision even though we had plucked a fairly big patch to start the surgery.

I am praying that we have gotten everything, that she will pull through this difficult 24 hours, and that she will be able to tolerate food soon so she can regain strength.

Please, I welcome any thoughts on management of the situation in the next few days would be appreciated.

Thanks for your encouragement and suggestions thus far. The BYC folks are terrific, I do not know what I would do without you.

Beth

 

[viktoriacl]

I think you need to start some SOFT foods. She is malnurished already. Remember the eggs could not get processed because there was still a blockage. It's gone now. She should be OK to handle soft stuff. She clearly needs it. I would not wait. Start with yogurt/eggs. She needs protein to heal. Yes she could probably use an antbiotic. I am a human nurse and would defer that part to an expert. There are many on here. It may just depend what you can get from either your vet or your feed store. Just make sure you get the correct dosage for a chicken. Good work!

 

[viktoriacl]

bump?? Post did not bump but reply posted??

 

[embrown]

kay, crop was empty this morning...maybe we got it all. The area feels warmish, I still need more information about whether to antibiotic or not and if so which one and how much for how long. Her head was up and she clucked at us when we looked in on her. She is walking about but just a bit unsteady on her feet especially if she gets on the wood floor. We put more triple antibiotic cream on the site this morning. We are now feeding her a large teaspoon of yogurt with a few sprinkles of shredded cheese. In a few hours I will try egg or maybe some tuna? She clucked when she saw me bringing the bowl and began to eat as soon as I got it to her level and she did not even wait until I set the bowl down. She also went immediately to the water with electrolytes when I put it in there. 'she keeps pecking at the empty bowl hoping for one more bite. She also continues to go to the water. Should I limit how much water I give her?

 

[ruth]

Great job. I'm betting you got it all this time. Yeah, it's hard to stress how thorough you have to be in cleaning out an impacted crop. If you think of it like a stopped up drain - you get a better idea. You have to go "down" the drain a bit - in other words, get to very bottom of the crop where it's actually stopped up.

As far as foods, I wouldn't give her any today - but you can give her raw egg - it's highly nutricious and mine all love it - or just stir up a few egg yolks and feed them to her. I really would try and give the crop a day to heal since it was opened twice. But, as you saw, it starts to heal really quickly.

In this case it wouldn't hurt, and might help, to give antibiotics - I normally don't since I haven't found they are necessary but when they are, I don't hesitate to use them. The feed store sells an Agricillin which is Penicillin G. I give 1cc in breast. Give it to her for maybe 3 days to help prevent infection.

Again, great job - it takes guts to do but she would have died if you had not.

 

[ruth]

You can also crush up some B vitamins and add them to her water. That will give her the vitamins she needs right now to regain her strength. I'll crush 3 or 4 and add to a small amount of drinking water. In other words, have the water very discolored and strong since she probably won't drink much anyway and if she does, all the better.