Huge crop on 8 week old meat birds

[TeamChaos]

Hello there, we've got a couple of meat birds whose crops don't seem to be emptying all the way. They go a solid 12 hrs without food overnight, but a few of them still come out of the coop in the morning with a noticanle crop. Is this normal? Is there something I should add to their diet? They are pastured, they are ranging and eating grower feed, grit, and all the goodies they can find. Any information is appreciated.

 

[Incukahlan]

What type of meat birds are they(breed)? I also had this issue at times with some Cornish Cross that we had. We monitored their feed and they were active until we processed them at 12 weeks. We had a 0% mortality rate(with 25 birds) doing it that way, but I still found that sometimes their crops didn't seem to be emptying all the way. I don't think anything was wrong with ours, again we didn't even lose any-my guess was that even though we were monitoring their feed, when they did eat of course they would just gorge, end result stuffing themselves beyond belief, therefore making it harder to process what was in their crop. Wish I could give you an actual solution. Good luck!

 

[TeamChaos]

I'm so happy to hear of your experience though! Ours are cornish cross and they are active too, so fingers crossed that we also have no casualties! Thanks again!

 

[Incukahlan]

Of course! Good luck with everything. How many are you raising?

 

[TeamChaos]

My daughter is raising 20 for her 4H project- it's the first time we've ever done the cornish cross.

 

[aoxa]

Are they emptying somewhat?

They could be finding stuff in their bedding overnight. Not enough to have the huge bulging crops they tend to have after feeding, but still some...

I do however toss scratch in their bedding to keep it turned.. and it's deep litter, so even if I don't for a while, they still end up finding SOME things to eat.

 

[TeamChaos]

They get moved on to clean grass every night so there's not much they could be stocking up on. There's one girl who looks like she has a softball crop and it doesn't empty over nite.