Impacted Crop with Long Fibrous Grasses

[asciiblue]

My chicken ate some very long (12 inch) thick weed/grass that is actually very hard to even pull apart. She now has an impacted crop and it seems I have been able to get all the impact down except for a hacky sack size ball and I am pretty sure it is those long grass pieces she ate. Will it ever go down through the crop knowing it is that long? You literally cannot rip this grass/weed in half with your hand it is so strong.

At first I thought she had sour crop but am back to just an impacted crop. I have given her plain greek yogurt and olive oil with a good amount of crop massages.

 

[SmiYa0126]

Hello! @asciiblue I had a similar situation, my hen ate straw , she stopped eating I almost lost her.

This is what saved her, I force fed her for a month, she fought me pretty much the whole time. I started giving her calcium citrate halfway through, I did a partial molasses flush (she fought me with that too), and bought a tiny watermelon at Aldi and fed her that over four days or so. She was on the mend after the calcium, molasses flush and watermelon.

https://bitchinchickens.com/2021/07/22/internal-flushes-for-chickens/
Scroll down to molasses flush ratios. I used unsulphured black strap molasses.

 

[CarolTer]

There are a number of posts on here about impacted crops. I had a chicken who had both sour crop and once I got rid of that with garlic in her water and apple cider vinegar, I found a large hard impaction, about the size of a softball and it felt like grass and twigs. Surgery is NOT an option. So I tried the mineral oil and massages for two days. That did NOTHING! Then I read about papaya and/or papaya enzyme extract. So I started feeding her nothing but papaya flesh and seeds for the first day. The hard ball had reduced the next morning and there was poop in her cage. The next day I fed her papaya and hard boil egg (I wanted her to have some protein). I even gave her a few meal worms. Here is it the third morning. The ball in her crop is now about half the size of a golf ball. I am not even massaging like I was doing with the mineral oil. She is perky and hungry. I will keep her inside and keep feeding her papaya and papaya enzymes until it is all gone which I suspect will be tomorrow morning.

I hope that helps folks who have an impact crop.
Carol.