HELP! Sour crop!

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Ginger B said:
Thank you for your optimism Shaby! My husband and I are doing our best but it is difficult when your hen says "oh no!" Bc she hates the syringe. It really breaks our hearts but if it's going to maker better then we have to administer meds and stuff.
Thank you your thread link, I'll make sure to take notes!
Click to expand...
Is she eating at all? If so, you can boil some eggs, then mash them, shell and all til the are really mush, I use a hand potato masher, and see if she will eat it. If she does you could put her meds in that and see if she eats it on her own??? Just an idea, also the mashed eggs are full of protein, really good for a sick chicken, but not sure if it will over tax her croup??? If you can't feed them to her, your other chickens will benefit from them, and her eggs will not go to waste! Also, check on the withdrawl time for egg consumption with the meds she is on.
 
FYI, a bird needs 30ml/kg of fluids every 6-8 hours to stay hydrated. To quote my vet "it's not usually the disease that kills them, it's dehydration".

-Kathy
 
Cas, Yep, considering they don't weight much, I agree the do need to stay hyrated, and can dehydrate fast!

So, was looking around on the internet and found this.

How to Identify and Treat Sour Crop in Chickens

Sour crop is a horrible poultry disorder but there are ways to fight it. When a chicken has sour crop, if not treated quickly the condition can be fatal. Last updated: Mar 25, 2013 Sour crop is treatable if caught in time.

Sour crop is a condition caused by the crop not fully emptying. An accumulation of food begins to ferment and is either caused by or results in a plug of material blocking passage further into the digestive system. A fungal infection rapidly takes hold, making the problem even worse.
What the Crop is sour croup.
The crop is the pouch of skin below a chicken’s wattles (dangly bits under the beak). It is where food goes when swallowed before heading further into the digestive system. The crop varies in size depending upon how much food a chicken has consumed, sometimes appearing to be a quite heavy and round ball and on other occasions being more like an empty bag.
When something goes wrong with the workings of the crop, a chicken finds itself in trouble very quickly.
How to Recognise Sour Crop
It is easy to identify sour crop. The symptoms are as follows:
  • crop fails to empty.
  • chicken has awful bad breath.
  • crop seems filled with water and has a balloon-like feel.
  • an affected bird may jerk its head around, trying to dislodge a blockage.
  • the crop is abnormally large and does not fluctuate in size.
A chicken that has suffered from sour crop for a while will also display the following symptoms:
  • significant weight loss.
  • disengagement from social activity with the rest of the flock.
  • little if any interest in eating or drinking.
  • droopy tail.
  • unusually depressed responses to external stimuli.
How to Make Sour Crop go Away
  1. Isolate the chicken. Separating the bird with sour crop from its flock provides it with the space needed for a quiet and stress-free recovery.
  2. Don’t feed solid food. No layers’ pellets, no corn, no greens. These will only further exacerbate the problem.
  3. Try soft food. Cold mashed potatoes (no butter or salt) and plain boiled rice are good choices. Such foods stand a chance of getting past any blockage, and won’t worsen the problem.
  4. Clean water must always be accessible but do not add anything to it. Cider vinegar, a favourite additive said to help fight worms and other parasites, can make sour crop worse.
  5. Give the bird a small amount of plain bio-yoghurt containing ‘friendly bacteria’ on a daily basis. The evidence for the efficacy of these bacteria in helping chickens is anecdotal but the yoghurt certainly does no harm to chickens and may help, so it is worth giving it a try. And they like it.
  6. Try to loosen impacted material inside the crop. Using an eyedropper or syringe, open the chicken’s beak and get vegetable oil into the crop in very small quantities of no more than 5ml, once a day. Be careful to get the applicator right inside, beyond the tiny hole at the back of the bird’s tongue that leads directly to the lungs. Otherwise the bird could choke.
  7. Follow the oil with gentle massage of the crop in a downward direction, towards the belly, just for a few minutes. The crop can be massaged again later but no more than once every hour or two to avoid upsetting the bird, which would impact on its recovery chances.
The Last Resort Against Sour Crop
Vomiting can be induced preferably by a vet and with two people involved. It must be borne in mind that the shock and upset of this procedure can easily kill an already compromised chicken.
The procedure is as follows:
  1. Wrap the bird in a towel and gently tilt it forward (not back) so that its body is vertical to the floor and head close to the ground.
  2. Massage the crop down towards the beak.
  3. The beak may have to be opened to get the vomit out.
  4. Do this for no more than half a minute, maximum.
  5. Allow the bird to rest and attempt the procedure only once or twice.
  6. When the crop is partly or completely emptied, allow the bird to rest and keep it separate from the flock until a full recovery is confirmed.
If this does not work, a vet can (dependent upon how ill the chicken is) perform surgery to open the crop and manually remove the blocking materials.
 
Last edited:
Thank you Kathy!
We are getting the hang of things!
Everyone has been so much help, prior to joining backyard chickens I was litterly going crazy w no idea what to do.
 
Why shouldn't panicure (sp) (i'm 1/2 asleep it's late) shouldn't be used during a molt cycle?
Bc my bet has her on that paste and she is molting, maybe twords the end of it. Will this hurt her?
When ppl say ignorance is bliss man they are correct. With wisdom comes worry.


Sigh, we're still waiting on a huge terrific poop!
 
Hey guys one more question. So upon this sour crop event w my Ginger; I will be going out to scrub our chicken house to an inch of its being. It's a wooden chicken house so it will absorb some of whatever I use to clean it. I painted it on the inside when my chicken kids were just little chicks and were still living inside our home.
What do you use to disinfect and clean that wont hurt my chickens? Anything all natural but still powerful enough to get the job done?
 
I actually don't try to disinfect my chicken coop. If I want to disinfect something though, I think just regular old 10% bleach solution works well, then be sure to let it dry and air it out because it will irritate eyes and nose(although ususally not at that weak concentration.)
 
My first instinct is bleach as well but i thought if there is something better you guys knew about.

This morning Ginger started to jerk her neck while drinking like her crop is full. What to do now? Her crop is small last time I checked and we are feeding her Kiefer w crti-care mixed in. This morning when she pooped there was green fecal matter where as for the past few days her poop has just been water and white and mucus. I know the nutrients are passing through her system and I massage her in a downward motion and I burp her too but I'm thinking there is still an impaction somewhere. I feel her crop and it's soft, I can't find a hard spot or impaction anywhere. She is still not eating on her own but I offer her everything. Today I'm going to the organic food store to see if I can obtain lactos free yogurt, soft organic fruit (or do yiu think it will ferment?) and maybe some baby food.

Also my vet stated that she should be drinking eltrolite water but after a few days she is sick of it and wants regular water, I've read that you should offer clean water w not additives at this time.

She is going back to the vet today for a check up, should I tell him to discontinue the use of her wormer seeing that she is still possibly in a molt cycle? As of today She still has 4 days left on her prescription of her antibiotic 2xd-10d and this will be the 3rd day of her nystatin.

My other 4 chickens are fine, I have been giving them Kiefer every night before bed and there crops are beautifully empty in the AM.

Looking fwd to responses.
 
Some folks use Oxine (sp) to clean EVERYTHING when they have had a sick chickens. Waterers, food bowels, roost, etc. Your girl is not sick, but I am sure you could still use it, I don't know of any all natural cleaner besides sunshine, it kills everything from virus to worms with its UV, according to my vet. Bleach works too, just let it air dry really well, and ventilate the enitre coop, would be my advise when using bleach. Do you deep litter your coop?

I meant to ask what did the vet get out of her croup? Grass? Or just her feed?
 

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