I am not sure what this is

[erock]

I have a hen that I noticed has a large "goiter" or squishy growth on her front, it doesn't look good and she also has a slight limp when she is skampering away.

Here is a pic.

Wondering if you can help me identify what this is, she looks okay but not as lively as the others.

Thanks again,

 

[MotherJean]

Holy crow! That crop is enormous. If the size of that goes down overnight (because she's not eating) then she's probably just a big, piggy eater with a pendulous crop. If the size doesn't go down, however, you've probably got an impacted crop on your hands and you'll need to take some action.

 

[pgpoultry]

You need to check that crop first thing in the morning.
If the swelling is still there, feels boggy and the hen has 'bad breath', she has impacted (sour) crop.
there are lots of threads on how to manage it, but the earlier it is dealt with the better,

sandie

 

[erock]

Thanks for your comments and help. Tried the oil and water massaging thing ect. Didn't help and she was getting creamed in the coup with the other girls so we went under the knife last night and cleared out the her crop. It was very full and I found a couple good size stones at the bottom, so hopefully that was it. She is resting quietly now inside, water today, try yogurt tomorrow. Not really that enjoyable for anyone involved but hopefully the worse is over. Thanks to BYC for all the related posts and all the people who have gone before me and were willing to share.

 

[MiniBeesKnees]

Did I read that right...you did surgery?

Could I ask for more details?

 

[MotherJean]

Hopefully your hen will make a full recovery. Impacted crops are no fun for anybody.

 

[BeccaB00]

HOLY MY GOODNESS!!!!

I have NEVER seen a crop that huge!!
I hope she feels better, now that she no longer has an impacted crop!

 

[RM44]

Wow you are brave! When mine had sour crop I pined away for days trying everything else before surgery. Fortunately I was able to cure mine without going under the knife.

Did you take pictures? Can you cronicle your surgery and the post-op healing? This could be beneficial for others.

 

[erock]

I am working on some pics to see if they came out our not. I had my father in law and my brother in law assist, it made me feel like a episode of the three stooges. Thankfully things went very much like others on this site. I used some iodine on the area to cut, (didn't do a great job of clearing the area ahead of time) made the initial incision high on chest about 1 inch and the crop really wanted to bust through. I made about a 3/4 inch incision in the crop and that was all we needed. My brother in law is going to school to be a chiropractor so he was able to get me a kit with scalpel, probes and some really helpful tweezers that had little teeth on the inside of the tip. Very helpful for pulling all the stuff out of there.

Lots of stuff in there and nice icky brown fluid. grass, leaves, corn about 8 whole mulberries. I kept pulling stuff out a little at a time, my father in law came back into the picture after leaving early, gloved up and helped by working the crop and gently pushing up to the incision and continued to loosed things up. Pulled out couple good sized stones and after about 30 minutes of emptying, I took some saline solution and flushed the crop a couple of times. Patient was doing relatively well. There was only a little blood.

Once done we used crazy glue and a clamp to seal up the crop, pushed that back in and used some neosporine or however you spell it and then did the same with skin. Put a bandage around her neck and put her in a cage inside for the night. We are looking to give her some water today and yogurt tomorrow. She looked spent last night and just went to sleep but she was alert and moving this morning. Hopefully we can get her back to strength before reintroducing here back to the flock.

I basically learned all this last week from this site, so thank you to all you have taken part is such an event to save a bird.

 

[MiniBeesKnees]

Did you anesthetize her first?
Tie her or hold her down?
Did she struggle?

You used crazy glue and a clamp...
did you remove the clamp after the glue had set?
Can you define 'clamp'?