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MassChick
Chirping
Basically the same as pendulous crop. Her crop was like a huge ball of dough that basically molded like dough. She was miserable.
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wow, this was very helpful!! thank you I know it was years since you posted but wanted to convey my thanksI too struggle with all the "recommendations" out there. I use forums as a last resort, because people will write stuff that is not relevant, or comment when they have no experience, and wastes your time reading thru crap that is irrelevant and not helpful, which drowns out the real experienced folks. I will give you my experiences, take it or leave it. I don't want anyone to tell me I'm wrong, cause this is what has worked for me.
For Sour Crop: The crop is soft & mushy, and contents smell bad. Soupy-sour-stuff might run out of mouth if they bend over for a drink/food. Hen is lethargic. To Fix, after many trys of suggested "cures", I finally bought 3-day monistat generic at the drug store (3-day is a 3-day cure, 7-day is a 7 day cure). You can only find it in cream now. Give the hen 2ml of the cream via syringe, then some liquid via syringe to wash it down, then massage the crop so the meds get all mixed in with the slop in the crop. Try to keep hen hydrated (very small amts at a time), and feed very small amount of nutritious food (e.g. meal worms). I over fed/hydrated hen, and then hen gurgled cause it was backing up and reaching her windpipe, so keep amts small. After 3-day monistat treatment, she was almost back to normal.
For Impacted Crop: The crop is usually hard and not squishy. My hen was perky and continued to do chicken things. I have not had much of a bad smell from impacted crop. If you are in doubt if it is impacted, cage w/o food, and if the crop empties in a day or two and there is poo, all is working just fine. Every night my hens go to bed with huge crops, but they are empty by morning. My experience was with a hen who gorged on long grasses, then all that grass gets in one big tangled ball. My first bout with her, I ended up asking my vet to cut open crop and remove ball. My second & third bouts, I tried another treatment, and it took days to resolve. Here goes: Isolate in cage. NO FOOD, but offer water. Keep track of poops, how much, how often, just to give you an idea if things are moving thru. Give 2-3 tablespoons of wine to hen via eye dropper every 4 hours or so and lightly massage mass (e.g. I try to work my finger thru the mass) for first day. NEVER SQUEEZE the crop; it will just cause the mass to become tighter; your goal is to get it to loosen up the mass and the wine helps. So bare with me on the following steps. Close to the crop, there is a bone forming a V in the chest. Find it. That is the area the contents of the crop go into the gut. Continue to give wine as before and on day 2 on you will GENTLY massage a tiny piece (marble sized) off of the mass in the crop, and then gently push the tiny piece into the gut (right above that V bone) and hold it there until it doesn't come back out into the crop. Every time you give your hen wine massage crop contents to see if you can massage another small piece off and force it into gut. If you don't feed her, and she continues to poop, and the crop gets smaller and smaller, her gut is slowly processing the small pieces you are gently pushing down into her gut. Each massage session takes about an hour, and it takes over a week to get the mass completely thru the system. LESSON: I have stopped offering longer grasses to my hens!
Pendulous Crop: I have no experience with this issue, Sorry.
Unfortunately, in many areas vets won't treat any animals other than dogs and cats. I have called all over my state, which is mostly rural, and I haven't found one. I have to try to take care of things on my own with what I can find at the store.I would suggest a vet at this point as well.