impacted crop on many hens!! help

[deespace]

Hi there! We've been keeping chickens for several years and this is a new one... We live in Costa Rica where "clean" feeding options are limited. I found what I thought would be good feed, the birds were eating it up and I noticed today several have what appears to be impacted crop. The feed is a mix of broken up corn, fish meal pellets and several other whole, but small seeds. I stopped giving it to them today, but looking for any advice to move forward and help them. I'm thinking of soaking some ground feedd with coconut oil and the like for them tomorrow then trying to massage each ones crop then?! Any other ideas are welcome. There are 25 birds in the flock!

 

[MysteryChicken]

Try them with coconut oil, & a crop massage. The massage will help pass food down to the stomach. They should get nothing, but water until their crop situation is fixed.

Are their crops really extended like this?

 

[deespace]

A few were very large like this.. of course it was also noticed at the end of the day. I was panicked. In the morning I reevaluated and it wasn't everyone, but about 8 or 9 needed the extra help. I gave them all bread soaked with coconut oil and checked each one, massaged who needed it and will watch. Thank you for the input!

Try them with coconut oil, & a crop massage. The massage will help pass food down to the stomach. They should get nothing, but water until their crop situation is fixed.

Are their crops really extended like this?View attachment 2411510

 

[MysteryChicken]

A few were very large like this.. of course it was also noticed at the end of the day. I was panicked. In the morning I reevaluated and it wasn't everyone, but about 8 or 9 needed the extra help. I gave them all bread soaked with coconut oil and checked each one, massaged who needed it and will watch. Thank you for the input!

Did their crop size go down? You could've given them coconut oil chunks, but if the coconut oil soaked bread helped, then that's good.

 

[deespace]

The crops all drained after that and a massage. It's pretty warm here and our coconut oil is always liquid!

 

[Ebony Rose]

If you still have that feed left, you may soak it first to see if those pellets expand when wet and if so, feed it wet so that it doesn't expand in their crop.

 

[rosemarythyme]

Not really sure if it was impacted crop or they just overate because they liked the new feed that much. Do your birds have access to good sized grit?

Of course keep an eye on all of them, but if you continue to see bulging crops at night, they could just be eating a lot of it right before bed.