Fighting sour crop

[homesteading101]

2 birds within the last week have gotten sour crop. I free range my birds so I'm not exactly sure what they ate. One pearl star leghorn (4 weeks) has died. My silver laced wyandotte (6 weeks) has the symptoms.

 

[azygous]

Mold on anything a chicken eats can cause sour crop. Look at decomposing vegetation, scummy water puddles or water bowls, compost piles where old discarded fruits and veggies may have been dug up by the chickens, and smell your feed bags for rank odors indicating mold as you can't always see it.

It's important to investigate until you find the source of the mold as mold can also be associated with botulism toxin and it can kill chickens, while mold can cause neurological damage and paralysis.