We had a ~ one-year-old hen who developed what seemed to be an impacted crop. It was enlarged, very hard and didn't go down overnight. We tried isolating her, giving ACV in her water and a soft diet. The swelling went down some but didn't go away. We thought we were going to have to cull her but my husband found information on doing surgery to clear the impacted crop. We did that today. When I got in there, the crop was virtually empty and there wasn't a lot of room. We decided culling was our only option. It was apparent she was starving to death and the situation wasn't resolving itself. After butchering, I checked out her crop and other organs to see what I could learn. Her crop is pictured below. The lining/sac was thickened up to an inch in places and there was very little room left inside the crop. Her gizzard had some grit in it and lots of grass. Her left breast (under the crop) was large compared to the right which was almost non-existent (shown in the other picture). This had obviously been going on for a while as there wasn't much left to her. I'm curious if anyone has run into this or has any ideas what might cause this.
I have never seen that before. Do you have more photos of what the gizzard, heart, liver, etc. looked like? @Eggcessive @coach723 @azygous @rebrascora
I too have not seen one like that and wonder if it is tumerous. There looks to be a good amount of yellow fat on her and a decent amount of muscle/meat for a laying bird. Usually with crop problems (and tumours) the bird will become emaciated and the breast bone is often clearly visible and sharp under the skin. From that photo, the bird appears to be in good body condition and is still carrying fat, so I wonder if your expectation is too high for a laying bird.... they are usually scrawny compared to meat birds.
Chronic crop infection can cause the crop inner wall to thicken, leading to impacted crop and starvation. Obviously, this is a graphic example.
Those are all the pics I took. Everything else looked normal based on my recollection of other hens I've culled in the past. Thank you. In that case, she had long term issues we missed.