Crop Issue

[Rachael May]

Hi all. We're new chicken keepers with very little experience and we're hoping for advice on a crop issue.
One of our hens is a 7 month old who's been laying well up until four days ago. We're unsure of her breed.
We've noticed her crop is not fully emptying overnight although it does go down significantly. It's quite hard first thing in the morning and by the afternoon its very full and quite squishy. Her poop is on the watery side in comparison to the rest of the flock. Yesterday morning when we let them out we noticed two soft shelled eggs right under where she was roosting overnight (she always lays in the nesting box). She hasn't laid a healthy egg in four days. Other than that she appears normal, energetic, eating, drinking etc.
Many thanks.

 

[azygous]

Next time you go to the store, stop by the vitamin aisle and get a bottle of this. Calcium citrate plus D3. It works the easiest of all forms of calcium, even better than oyster shell, athough it's not meant to replace it for day in day out calcium needs.

Give her one of these tablets whole directly into her beak. She'll swallow with no problem.

Her calcium levels need to be calibrated so her shell gland can handle the packaging of an egg in a quality shell. Getting her calcium levels calibrated will also help regulate her ovulation so that just one yolk is released in a 25 hour cycle, avoiding two eggs coming down the chute in tandem, which risks getting one stuck that would cause her to be egg bound.

This will probably cure her crop problem because two eggs in the same cycle can cause an obstruction that makes her feel very sluggish and uncomfortable and slows her crop function. Continue to give one tablet daily until you see eggs coming one at a time and with a good solid shell. Then she can go back to oyster shell to supply her calcium needs.

 

[Rachael May]

Thank you so much. I've gone out and got the product and have started her on the tablets from this afternoon. Greatly appreciated!