Hen's crop slow to move solids, probably not GI impaction? (Stable for now)

[casportpony]

@missbeasty, how's your hen doing? I'm sorry no one replied.

@Hjorstad, how's your hen doing?

 

[missbeasty]

@missbeasty, how's your hen doing? I'm sorry no one replied.

@Hjorstad, how's your hen doing?

Hi @casportpony, I appreciate you reaching out! @Hjorstad, I'm so sorry I didn't see your message. You made an amazing effort to help your girl, I hope she made it through.

Creamsicle is, by some miracle, fine! I guess it really was just some kind of GI blockage and not tumors or some other harbinger of a more serious/terminal condition. Once she was eating and drinking normally, I gave up on trying to restrict her weird pica behavior, and she got over it with time. I ended up moving her to my other coop with two other girls who are less aggressive than her former coopmates, and she became the *very* bossy head of that flock. She tidbits for the other girls like a rooster, and has become extremely vocal.. if she's awake, she's making some kind of noise, growling or humming. She is, as far as I can tell, completely blind on her right side, but she has adapted to one-eyed life very well. She can navigate her environment, keep tabs on the other girls and even run in a funny diagonal way, with her head turned to the side. I don't know if she'll ever lay eggs again, but she's a beautiful and entertaining pet all the same.

I do plan on reintegrating my two flocks eventually, probably after the holidays so I can devote more uninterrupted time to babysitting them through that process.

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The other side of the impacted crop coin...

I do fear that one of Cream's flockmates, Meg, is not long for this world. :/ She had what seemed to be a similarly impacted crop mid-October. I kenneled her and went through the BYC impacted crop protocol for days without much improvement. Palpating her abdomen, I found what I think to be her gizzard, enlarged and very firm, like a pouch packed full of gravel. I tried gently massaging that mass to see if I could dislodge some of that grit. She was able to pass some amount of liquid, so I gave her some liquid nutrition and restricted solids (though she really wanted to eat sand and grit). She shambled on like this for a couple weeks with the barest improvement. I had to leave town for a week, and agonized over whether I should put Meg down beforehand. She's the sweetest, gentlest bird, my little buddy. I decided not to, with remorse and anxiety, half expecting her to die before I got back. She survived, and in fact miraculously improved while I was gone. Her crop totally emptied. However, I noticed recently that she seems to have a hard mass in her abdomen. I've palpated it a few times and it is consistently there, firm but without that crunchy gravelly "give" to it that her grit-filled gizzard had. She's barely two years old.. she seems so young, but I guess a not-uncommon age to start seeing reproductive cancers in hens. I don't know when she last laid an egg and I don't expect her to lay again. For now, at least, she is behaving normally.. eating and drinking, moving her crop, keeping up with the flock, sunbathing and doing other chicken-y things. (Today she caught and tried to eat a huge gnarly centipede!! I got it away from her because I was afraid it would bite her.. sheesh!!!) I'll leave her be while she seems to be in good spirits, and make the difficult decision when she becomes too uncomfortable to enjoy being a chicken. Meggy is such a good bird.

Anyway, not a happy story, I'm sorry, but I figured it was worth sharing on this thread. In my (limited) experience, it seems like crop problems are, more often than not, an indicator of a more serious problem downstream. Creamsicle is my greatest success story, an amazing bounce back after coming so close to death.. but she is an outlier, in my experience. I've dealt with a fair number of crop issues and the outcome tends to be not great.. either she crashes pretty quickly, or I'm trying to bail out a sinking ship, dealing with recurring, worsening issues for months as a bird circles the drain. The resilience of even very sick chickens makes it so hard to make that final judgement call.

Lots of love to anyone dealing with similar issues, and to everyone giving advice, good wishes and support in this forum!