Help, Please! Hen with Large, Bald, Purple Crop

[OneBrahma]

Something is wrong with our hen. I think it is sour crop, but in other posts on sour crop I have never seen anyone mention a bald crop as one of the symptoms.

Symptoms:
-very thin, most noticeably in the feet
-inactive
-wings droopy
-crop feels mushy, seems swollen. I can lift the feathers growing around it and there it is: big, bald, and purple
-when I turned her upside down after massaging her crop she vomited a brown liquid, like muddy water
-her legs are naturally gray, but they seem to be mottled with black spots and I can't recall whether or not she's always had them

I really hope this is sour crop, and not a disease. We've got an ameraucana pullet with the same thing. I just examined her. She's still thin, but her crop doesn't feel like a water balloon anymore, just a little mushy. She's got nice, fluffy feathers growing all over it, and she's active and perky like the other chickens.

 

[scratch'n'peck]

Hmm... It is hard to say if she may have more than one thing going wrong, but maybe long term slow crop or sour crop could lead to feather loss due to long term distention of the crop area. When my hen had a mushy slow crop, I removed her from the coop and made sure she only had pellets or soft food. I would take her food away at night to see if the crop would empty over night. She was loosing weight, too. Slow crop is typically thought to be due to a fungal infection, and that is why people often try feeding yogurt or Apple cider vinegar. I finally took my hen to the vet and he found she had a bacterial infection which she got an antibiotic shot to treat, and I was taught to tube feed her to put on weight.

I haven't read about a contagious disease that lists slow crop as a symptom.