Help! Pendulous Crop healed, now Sour crop, have i missed anything?

[HayesBartonBiddies]

I have a pretty grey/brown hen we thought was an aracana but looks like she has some buff orpington mixed in. She is about 6-8 months old. A few weeks ago she developed a pendulous crop. We took her to the vet and they put a "crop bra" on her to "hold it up so the contents could better drain to the gizzard. I also gave her 2mL of veggie oil via syringe down the throat. After a lot of daily massaging her crop shrank back down and she seemed normal-ish again.

My mom added her back to the flock. I think part of the problem is they have access to scratching grains and a block of that whole-grain stuff. None of the other chx have a problem with it but she keeps having issues, and it began when they started getting that food. Anyway, she developed what I can only guess is sour crop. She stinks, has a big water-balloon crop, and is lethargic. I have done a LOT of massaging, giving her bread pieces soaked in buttermilk and holding water up to her mouth. She was drinking yesterday. I isolated her in a padded box last night so she could sleep away from the rest (inside our house!). She did poop over night- its greenish/white. The last three mornings I have gotten her to throw up a watery white fluid by holding her pointing towards the ground and massaging/squeezing the crop. I never do it for more than 10 seconds. I did that this morning too and she threw up a lot. At this point, she wont' eat or drink!!

She is very lethargic, closing eyes a lot, and seems to want to hid with her face or side up against a wall. I got 2mL of molasses water down her throat with a syringe. I alos have some baby applesauce out there for her but she isn't eating it. Is there anything I can do at this point? Is she in shock? Dehydrated? Sick of me messing with her? Should I keep her isolated inside, or try to put more water/molasses down her throat every 4-5 hours? Really don't want her to die

 

[ella]

I can only share my own experiences with sour crop/crop stasis. I had horrible problems with it for the first 2 years of keeping chickens. I lost 5 or so girls to it during that time. I tried antibiotics, natural remedies, crop flushing etc... no real help. What turned it around for me was switching from galvanized waterers to plastic.

With the plastic I can (and do!) scrub them with a 10:1 bleach solution, 1 part bleach to 10 parts water, every other day or so. It's very difficult to really clean galvanized waterers, bleach will corrode them, also apple cider vinegar and other additives to the water can do the same. And having very clean water was apparentely the problem for my flock, because once I started bleaching my waterers I stopped having to deal with sour crop.

As treatment the only thing that really helped was a clean waterer and probiotics, either yogurt or probiotic powder mixed into the food. And just make sure she keeps eating. Treats like catfood or scrambled eggs, anything that she's excited about eating.

I hope you figure out what's causing it and how to fix it. It can be a very frustrating problem.

 

[PurpleChicken]

Copper sulfite is supposed to help with crop issues. It's just a water additive available at feed stores or Tractor supply.

SHe could have an infection so a light antibiotic won't hurt. If seen and assisted a fellow member with doing crop flushes and well, it's nasty. You force a tube into their crop and massage it until they puke. Nasty...

If one of my birds developed crop issues I'd isolate, feed yogurt, oats, and lots of water, throw some acv, cs, and terramycin in the water, and just see what happens.

Best of luck.

 

[BarkerChickens]

Keep massaging the crop in a downward motion. Hold all food from her and give her water with some apple cider vinegar (ACV) added to it (preferably ACV with mother, but regular will do). Make sure it is in plastic or glass as ACV corrodes metal and this can be toxic. A few times a day (as available anyway), give her an irrigation syringe full of 1/2 ACV - 1/2 water. This will take some patience as you can only give a little bit at a time to ensure she doesn't choke on it. I had a hen with sour crop that I would massage her crop while giving her the syringe. It would gurgle something nasty and she would have gnarly burps, but she started pushing up against my hand to keep massaging her crop and would open her beak for more of the ACV mixture, so it must've felt better. Sour crop is a yeast infection in the crop (hence hold food so it doesn't ferment more in there). The ACV kills the yeast. After a couple days you should see a difference and after 4 or so days, she should be near normal. Sour crop kills, so act quickly.

 

[HayesBartonBiddies]

Update: Well, she would barely eat all day yesterday. She ate maybe 3 bites of peeled tomato, one bite of buttermilk-soaked-bread. No water. I syringed 2mL of water into her (with molases). Today she is almost non-responsive. My mom got home and held her while we've given her 10mL of molasses water and we're taking her to the vet at 3:30. I think she is severely dehydrated. The water seemed to slightly perk her up but she still won't drink on her own volition.

If i had it to do over, I wouldn't have made her throw up- I think that just made the dehydration go faster. Despite giving her acv water the last 3 days her crop is still bigger, but a bit smaller than before. Hopefully the vet can give us an antibiotic- I haven't seen anywhere online to buy Terramycin. They have plastic drinking bottles but we'll start adding the acv and cleaning them with bleach more. So exhausted. This is so frustrating!

 

[Rosa's birds]

I'm just looking for information on how to treat pendulous crop and ran across your post. I have a really sweet, dear Cochin who has a pendulous crop. I have emptied her crop twice in the past week, given her veggie oil and massaged it, I made a crop bra for her to hold her crop up, but nothing seems to be helping. She has been isolated from the rest of the flock for the last 3 days and seems to be getting slowly worse. She is not eating or moving much today. There are really no droppings in her area that I moved her to on Thursday night. I am not sure what else to do to try to get her crop to empty into her digestive system. What happened with your chicken who had a pendulous crop? Do you know if there is anything else I can do for her?

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Amy