impacted crop, huge,hard,not responding to treatment

[Minniechickmama]

Gloria,
Don't pluck the feathers, that seems mean to me, but just clipping them will suffice. I had done the surgery and there is hardly any blood, the chickens just kind of go into a trance and relax.
I also mixed a little apple cider vinegar in the water after.
other than that, just follow what the other said. There are plenty of videos online or the procedure is described here on BYC on a few threads.
Good luck.

 

[AnnainMD]

Gloria's Gang :

Wow! This sounds very encouraging! So you gave her nothing but water for a couple of days before the surgery? Did she lay still? How was she held down? Did you shave/pluck the feathers around the area? I remove all of my kids and DH's stitches and have watched surgical procedures before. I know I can handle it but I'm afraid she will be in a lot of pain. I can't help but think the alternative at this point will be death so I think it will be worth a try. I will check with my vet or order the surgical kit tomorrow and recruit a helper. Thank you for your help.

I honestly can't imagine doing it alone, a helper would be much better (less stress for you and the bird I would think). She layed remarkably still, the only time she even flinched was when my husband was trying to make sure the last bit of gunk was out of her crop and with one of the stitches. We had plastic chucks down on top of a large dog crate (definitely elevate the operating surface) and a towel on top of that. I used the towel to drape over her head and around her body, exposing the crop area. The crop seems to be on the R side of their bodies when full so we had her sidelying on the L side. I DID NOT pluck, the skin was quite distended anyway and we just used small scissors to cut a few hollow feathers (just to clear enough room for the incision). Definitely use a scalpel and have something that acts as a small scooper, using your fingers would be hard to get everything out.

I had to order some stuff from Amazon as the vet was NOT helpful.

Anyway, I checked her crop this AM. She has been back with the flock since Friday evening, eating regular food and the treats I've given them; I checked her crop this AM and it's completely flat. Thank goodness.

Chickens go to bed with full crops, digest and then in the AM should have a flat crop (before they eat "breakfast"). To see if she was "clearing" at all, I gave her water for several days after bringing her in, saw that the crop was softer and smaller. Seeing "improvement" I tried giving her some eggs before bedtime, in the morning her crop was hard as a rock again. That's when I decided that it was time. Her crop had not gone down overnight.

She has not been laying eggs for several weeks. Hopefully, that will start soon now that she's feeling better and we're starting to get more daylight.

You can email me with any specific questions.​

 

[Gloria's Gang]

I spoke with my regular small animal vet (who used to be my equine vet when I had horses, he only does small animal now). They were very helpful. They GAVE me a set of each, regular and dissolving, suture kits. I also have dull nosed "forcep" type tool to pull out gunk. I need to find a scalpel and scooping tool. Since she still has a good amount of meat on her bones I am going to wait until Friday night or Saturday morning to do this so I will be home to watch her for the weekend. She ate vanilla yogurt tonight. I will bring her in to the big dog crate about 24 hours before the procedure and give her only water. Will keep everyone posted. Thank you for the support. Without it I'm not sure I would do this!

 

[AnnainMD]

Gloria's Gang :

I spoke with my regular small animal vet (who used to be my equine vet when I had horses, he only does small animal now). They were very helpful. They GAVE me a set of each, regular and dissolving, suture kits. I also have dull nosed "forcep" type tool to pull out gunk. I need to find a scalpel and scooping tool. Since she still has a good amount of meat on her bones I am going to wait until Friday night or Saturday morning to do this so I will be home to watch her for the weekend. She ate vanilla yogurt tonight. I will bring her in to the big dog crate about 24 hours before the procedure and give her only water. Will keep everyone posted. Thank you for the support. Without it I'm not sure I would do this!

You are very fortunate to have such a nice vet (not that mine is mean but let's say not as helpful). Just try to be very CLEAN, since you can't be sterile. I wish I knew what the scooper was called but the forceps should work if you can't find anything. Just make sure to clean everything out, you can't leave anything in the crop, rinse with saline or water. If you can't get sterile water or saline I would boil some water (more than you think you need) and then let it cool to room temp (primitive effort at sterlizing) and use something to shoot it in: plastic bottle with pull spout, something like that. Whatever you use I would rinse it out with alcohol and then set out to dry overnight prior to the procedure or just buy a whole new bottle with the water already in it, that might do.
You have to make sure to clean the bottom hole of the crop where it connects to the proventriculus, if that's not clear, nothing will pass through.
Here's a diagram:
http://www.ca.uky.edu/smallflocks/Factsheets/Anatomy_and_Physiology/Anatomy_digestive.pdf

I kept telling my husband "Be gentle, her heart is right behind the crop!"

I'm sure you've read the other threads on this, very helpful. Good luck!​

 

[seminolewind]

Mine got french toast every morning, bread soaked in oil, a beaten egg, and microwaved. I wanted to put something in her stomach before she ate the twigs and whatnot. She drank alot of water, I put a bowl out on the patio step that she liked and drank plenty. I massaged twice a day. It all helped her move the stuff out. Right now she;s in a pen so she can gain some weight, and has limited access to the twigs and stuff.

 

[AbbyDog]

I want to echo the comments of others here and encourage you to try the surgery. I have had to do it 4 times now on three different birds.

As I type this, the first hen that we saved in early November through crop surgery is alive and well here in the kitchen and has laid several eggs. Her crop had also been the size of a softball and she was skin and bones before I realized that she was going to die if I did nothing. We had to cut her open twice due to my ignoring admonitions to keep her isolated in a small coop for a week. The first time, after a night in the house, I put her back in the coop with the others and went out of town for a week as I didn't have anyone to watch her while I was gone. Of course, when I got back, I saw what a bad idea that had been as her crop had ballooned back out as she had eaten anything she could cram in her mouth- but the worse problem was that I had used super glue instead of stitches and somehow the outer skin had opened up and then adhered to the crop. it was a big scabby mess and I had to use shears to cut away the scar tissue so that I could get a clean edge to sew. I used horse hair and a sewing needle, sterilized in boiling water. I really didn't think that the hen (or me) could handle it a second time- in fact my helper fainted during the operation! but the hen healed up very nicely, without any antibiotics. I made sure to give her only very soft and wet food- including ground and sieved crumbles mixed with fruit, yogurt or water. The first few days i feed her with an eye dropper to be sure that she was getting some nutrition. It took her up until recently to finally eat hard dry crumbles- but she really tears into them now. It also took her until this past week to have firm poop and not runny diarhea- but that might be in part due to the wet food.

Here are some things I learned:

it will be harder on you than on the hen.
wrap the bird in a sheet with the crop exposed and tie the legs snugly. drape her head and she will lay still. I put her on the butcher block kitchen island which was not quite tall enough. i had a helper keep a hand on her side just in case she wriggled or if the head drape slipped.
easier to keep the bird calm if you take her off the perch (or out of the coop) after dark and keep the operation room dim. I used a head lamp.

I know someone who uses lidocaine to numb the area first- either gel or injectible- but I have not been able to obtain any. I think that it would make me feel MUCH better about cutting into a living animal- but it had been such a dire situation each time that I just went without.

Really do make a larger incision than you think you need- because it will take more time to fish everything out through a small hole which is harder on both of you- and also because as you remove stuff, the stretched crop will shrink along with the incision. It is MUCH easier to be sure that you have removed everything if you can see into the crop. i used a bright LED light to look in.

i used cotton pads to mop any blood- there really was not that much- but i also tried to avoid blood vessels that I could see at the surface.

At first I had to use tweezers to pick the material out as it was so densly packed in the crop.
Have on hand paper towels that you can place the material that you remove from the crop onto- and them ball them up to throw away into a bag at your feet. There will be a lot of nasty smelling stuff that you will want to move away from your nose ASAP. My boy friend had to burn some incense in order to handle it.

I used cotton swabs dipped in a sterile water/providone mix to help remove the last bits. Expect to go through a lot of them. I also irrigated the crop with water that I had boiled with some providone mixed into it. This helped clean out the nasty stuff.

I sewed the crop and also the outer skin using fine horse hair that I got from an old violin bow. I know someone who has used her own hair. I made individual stitches as needed to close each wound- tying square knots.

Do keep the bird isolated and feed small amounts at first to allow the crop to regain its muscle tone. I let the bird sleep over night before I gave them anything other than offered some water.

The only lasting problem that we are left with from our first experience was that due to her two surgeries, the hen Exene was away from the main coop for about three weeks which was long enough for the rest of the flock to totally disown her. All efforts to reintegrate her have totally failed. That is why she has been sleeping at night in a dog crate in the kitchen...cute, but not really an ideal situation.


Good luck!

 

[AnnainMD]

Abbydog, good advice. We did the surgery in our office with all the lights on to see better, Ivy's head was draped with the towel so it was darkened for her. The crop DOES get smaller as you clean it out.

Go slow with food reintroduction and when you do, make sure she has food before bedtime so you can check her crop in the AM to see if it's flattened down. Ivy's poops were still kind of runny before I put her out with the others, but they started to look like real chicken poop and not just jets of water.

Good luck Gloria's Gang, I'll be rooting for you!

 

[AbbyDog]

Just wanted to mention a couple more things while I'm thinking of them:

The inside of the crop is wrinkled /folded and can be easily plucked or pinched with tweezers so be careful if you can't see inside. It is pinkish-white or greyish in color.

Be sure that you sew up the crop separately from the outer skin, which should float above it. There is a thin membrane on top of the crop but don't worry about it. I gently massage the crop and skin starting a day after surgery to be sure that it all doesn't get stuck together during healing.

 

[Gloria's Gang]

I am so amazed and so very thankful for all of the caring and informative responses I have received. It is because of all this advice that I feel confident about attempting this procedure. You are all a testament to how well this forum works and why it has so many members.

I now have two helpers and one videographer!!

What are your thoughts about antibiotics? I can get the general powder form to add into water but have been unable to get any penicillin. If I give her the water soluable antibiotic and then reintroduce her to the flock a week later, I'm afraid if she lays eggs they will get mixed in with the others. I hate to have to throw away good eggs in case one of them is Sylvia's.

Thanks again,
Kristina

 

[AnnainMD]

She might make it easy on you and not lay any eggs, but as I did not have any antibiotics, I don't know what to tell you. How long do you plan to keep giving the antibiotics? I'm guessing that after 2 days of being off, she'd be clear of the drug. You may want to look up the half-life of the drug, understanding that the number you're seeing is probably for people. And then calculate how long it would take for it to clear the system.