Hen shaking her crop and acting weird. (Updated with recovery!)

[Eggcessive]

Please do not get the idea that meat tenderizer is a good crop digestive aid. The immense hit of salt would probably put a chicken into shock and kill them.

Yes, exactly. That was a one time emergency treatment for a child with a piece of beef stuck in the esophagus. I think, eventually, they got it out during a esophagoscopy procedure. This should not be used on a chicken. Oil, still softener, water, and some grit hopefully will get the straw out.

 

[The Welch Chickens]

Her crop seems really yeast infected today. There were some bubbles coming out of her nostrils when my mom massaged her crop, and it feels more like an air/foam filled balloon than impacted. I think there is lots of foam in there (like when you activate yeast before making bread). We got a different Miconazole this morning, a suppository instead of cream. We have started her dosage on that; 1/8 inch, three times per day.

I still haven’t fed her the papaya. Do you think the sugars in it will activate the yeast more?

 

[azygous]

Suppositories are the same medicine as the cream. You should give a quarter inch minimum of a suppository. If you can succeed in reducing the crop to just half full, you could try the Epsom salt flush. It might clear out the rest of the solid material and it also has an effect on the yeast, neutralizing it and flushing it out of the digestive system. You will need to tube it, though, as it would take all day to get a half cup of the solution into her twice a day for three days in a row.

You can get a tubing kit for small animals from any vet.

 

[The Welch Chickens]

Suppositories are the same medicine as the cream. You should give a quarter inch minimum of a suppository.

Even if it's three times per day instead of two?

 

[ChickenKirk]

Hello!
The behavior is see is delayed emptying of the ingluvium (crop). The birds motion is attempting to move ingesta. I most commonly see ingluvitis caused from Candida albicans, a type of yeast that is ubiquitous in the avian world. Predisposition to this comes from dampened feed that isn't changed daily/contaminated with other chicken stool, etc. etc. The birds immune system is overwhelmed and infection sets in. There are bacterial causes as well but not as common. Generally with this specific condition you can notice a "sour smell"- the laymen's term is "sour crop". It can best be diagnosed through exam, culture/staining of crop contents, and radiographs. Sometimes a simple fecal smear and stain will find the budding yeast in the stool as well- it is important to find the "budding form"- yeast is common components of diet and you cannot default to infection if you see a few non-budding forms.
As far as treatment- you will actually save money by having a specific diagnosis. Then it
can be specifically treated. Doses of all medications are based on weight and there are a number of effective, relatively inexpensive treatments. I would hesitate to place the bird on a "preventative" dosing. this organism, as with most fungal/bacterial and even parasites, can become resistant, thus complicating the case. As stated, we catch all our birds in complete darkness with the red light, or memorize where they are before turning out the lights and simply pick them up.......doesn't work for owls

Kirk

 

[The Welch Chickens]

Hello!
The behavior is see is delayed emptying of the ingluvium (crop). The birds motion is attempting to move ingesta. I most commonly see ingluvitis caused from Candida albicans, a type of yeast that is ubiquitous in the avian world. Predisposition to this comes from dampened feed that isn't changed daily/contaminated with other chicken stool, etc. etc. The birds immune system is overwhelmed and infection sets in. There are bacterial causes as well but not as common. Generally with this specific condition you can notice a "sour smell"- the laymen's term is "sour crop". It can best be diagnosed through exam, culture/staining of crop contents, and radiographs. Sometimes a simple fecal smear and stain will find the budding yeast in the stool as well- it is important to find the "budding form"- yeast is common components of diet and you cannot default to infection if you see a few non-budding forms.
As far as treatment- you will actually save money by having a specific diagnosis. Then it
can be specifically treated. Doses of all medications are based on weight and there are a number of effective, relatively inexpensive treatments. I would hesitate to place the bird on a "preventative" dosing. this organism, as with most fungal/bacterial and even parasites, can become resistant, thus complicating the case. As stated, we catch all our birds in complete darkness with the red light, or memorize where they are before turning out the lights and simply pick them up.......doesn't work for owls

Kirk

Thank you for replying (and welcome to BYC, by the way!)

For the treatment of the yeast infection, I am treating her with Miconazole. I was using the vaginal cream, but now am using the suppository. It does not have any "preventative" dosing that I know of (besides, I now am almost positive she has a yeast infection, before I was not sure), so I am giving a full treatment.

 

[The Welch Chickens]

I think that if the yeast were not so bad, her crop impaction would be almost cured, or even totally gone.
I read that the shaking motion she is doing (in the videos of the first post) may be caused by the burning sensation she feels from the yeast. That might explain why she is still doing it.

 

[azygous]

You are correct that the yeast causes crop discomfort, thus the head gyrations. This movement is what often first calls attention to a crop issue.

There are various preventatives that make a crop inhospitable to yeast growth. These are ACV in the water, garlic in the water, copper sulfate in the water. But the reason for this particular yeast infection is impacted crop. As long as there is grass clogging the crop, it will fail to empty overnight. This provides an environment for the yeast to grow. As long as impacted grass remains, the yeast will persist. That's why it's important to get the crop cleared of the grass.

Treating with miconazole without getting the grass out of the crop will not cure the sour crop. The longer the crop goes without clearing the impaction, set aside the yeast issue, the more danger to the chicken from starvation.

Two options remain to clear the grass. You can try tubing Epsom salt solution to flush the digestive tract from beak to vent or you can do crop surgery and manually clear the grass out of the crop.

What I suggest is to check the crop in the morning, and if it's still full, carefully feel the contents. If you feel grass in the crop and if the crop is full to the max, then I recommend crop surgery tomorrow. If the contents take up only half the crop and are mostly solid, I recommend tubing the Epsom salts.

Time for a reality check. The crop is not going to be fixed with miconazole alone.

 

[The Welch Chickens]

You are correct that the yeast causes crop discomfort, thus the head gyrations. This movement is what often first calls attention to a crop issue.

There are various preventatives that make a crop inhospitable to yeast growth. These are ACV in the water, garlic in the water, copper sulfate in the water. But the reason for this particular yeast infection is impacted crop. As long as there is grass clogging the crop, it will fail to empty overnight. This provides an environment for the yeast to grow. As long as impacted grass remains, the yeast will persist. That's why it's important to get the crop cleared of the grass.

Treating with miconazole without getting the grass out of the crop will not cure the sour crop. The longer the crop goes without clearing the impaction, set aside the yeast issue, the more danger to the chicken from starvation.

Two options remain to clear the grass. You can try tubing Epsom salt solution to flush the digestive tract from beak to vent or you can do crop surgery and manually clear the grass out of the crop.

What I suggest is to check the crop in the morning, and if it's still full, carefully feel the contents. If you feel grass in the crop and if the crop is full to the max, then I recommend crop surgery tomorrow. If the contents take up only half the crop and are mostly solid, I recommend tubing the Epsom salts.

Time for a reality check. The crop is not going to be fixed with miconazole alone.

So your saying there can't be just a yeast infection without grasses, because there would be nothing for the yeast to feed on. That makes sense.

I am not expecting the miconazole to fix everything. I am continuing the coconut + olive oil and the massages. It just seems there is a lot of foam in her crop, and it's coming out of her nostrils.

 

[azygous]

It's not the grass causing the yeast. The grass is clogging the crop and likely the gizzard, as well, and when she eats food, the food remains too long in the crop, causing crop stasis. The stasis, (stagnancy) causes the yeast.

Grass is made up almost entirely of cellulose. Cellulose is not digestible unless you are a ruminant (creature with four stomachs). Single stomach critters like humans, dogs and chickens, cannot digest large amounts of cellulose. We can get away with eating salads, which are mainly cellulose, because we have teeth at the very beginning of our digestive process to chew and pulverize, and partially digest the material before it gets to the stomach.

Chickens don't have this feature. They don't "chew" their food until well after it clears the crop. That's what occurs in the gizzard with all the gravel chickens consume. But instead, the grass just sits in the crop, only small particles washing down into the gizzard after it hits the proventriculus, which is the sac that comes after the crop. This isn't a problem if chickens consume small bites of grass instead of wolfing down long blades and stems. This longer grass is what forms a clog and refuses to go down out of the crop. When it's taken this long to try to break up a grass clog, usually surgery is required to clean out the crop.