Impacted crop

[Kellylwong]

My hen has had an impacted crop (grass) for about 4-5 days now. I only noticed it 2 days ago. I’ve been giving her olive oil, ACV in her water, and crushed granite, and I’ve been massaging the crop. It started as a huge, hard baseball-size lump and now it’s about 2/3 of the size and squishy. She’s been pooping little bits of grass, so that’s encouraging. Anything else I should be doing? I really don’t want to do the surgery, although my husband is a doctor and he said he’ll do it. We just don’t have any lidocaine, so I feel like it would be painful to her.

 

[Cayuga momma]

I have never dealt with crop impaction, but I have read articles on here and most have said that the chickens don't seem to feel any pain during the surgeries. I hope she gets better!

 

[dawg53]

From what I've read, alot of crop surgeries dont have good outcomes.
Try giving her straight tomato juice orally. Hopefully that should get things moving even if her crop and gizzard are impacted.

 

[Kellylwong]

Oh. I haven’t read that before. Have you tried it?

 

[rebrascora]

I have read on many posts that Lidocaine or in fact any "ocaine" can be toxic to chickens even at low doses and/or applied topically.
I did the crop surgery on a pullet that I had massaged for about 10 days and like you there was a reduction in size but the vegetation that was left would not shift and I was confident she would die if I did not act. She was a bantam and she had lost so much weight and the crop contents were so heavy that it was constantly tipper her forward and she could only stay upright by resting it on the ground. I removed a baseball sized mass of soggy ravelled vegetation from her crop that would never have travelled up or down her digestive tract and had been there for at least 10 days, since I had removed her from access to anything other than a thin gruel made with water and oil and soaked pellets with a few Nutri Drops in it and incontinence pads for bedding. The sight of it vindicated doing the surgery for me. I'm sure it was not pleasant for her and she did struggle during the initial incision and unfortunately refluxed and aspirated and I thought she had died a couple of times, but as soon as I had glued her back together and let go of her she was on her feet and running around and eating scrambled egg like her life depended on it 10 mins later. She was skin and bone at that time but exactly 2 weeks after the surgery she was back up to weight and laid an egg. Sadly she had a predisposition to eat straw/hay etc and within 10 mins of being put back in the pen with the others, she had grabbed and swallowed another strand. I did my best to keep access to a minimum but had to balance it against quality of life and sadly she became impacted again and at that time other issues in my life were taking my attention and 6 months later she had impacted again. I did the surgery a second time but I had let her go too far and she was not strong enough to recover. Having done the surgery twice, I don't have any great qualms about not using anaesthetic, especially as she was so full of life after the first surgery..... you really would not believe how quickly she recovered. Even having aspirated some of the contents of her crop, she wheezed and rattled for a few days and I was sure she would die, but she came right without any medication at all. I glued the crop back together with super glue and left the outer incision open in case it needed to drain and just packed it with Germolene. I did not touch her for at least 3 days after the surgery because she was breathing so badly I did not want to stress her. I just cleaned her box and gave her food and water and talked to her and the incision healed brilliantly.
If you decide to go for the surgery, let me know as I have a few tips that I learned from my mistakes..... I'm sure your husband will make a much more professional job than I did, but it helps to learn from other peoples mistakes and find out what works and what doesn't. I didn't even have medical equipment.... just a craft knife set and some tweezers and a syringe with boiled sea salt solution to irrigate once I had removed the mass and I cleaned everything in Hibiscrub before I started.
I can say that whilst doing the surgery was terrifying for me.... I am as soft as muck so cutting into a live creature was horrific.... I felt totally vindicated by the result, both in terms of seeing what was in there and that it would never have shifted and the speed of her recovery. I am just sad that she got herself back into the same situation again and I was unable/maybe unwilling to prevent it since her quality of life would have been intolerable if I had kept her in isolation without any bedding or access to vegetation.

You can try a stool softener like Dulcolx without stimulant to see if that will help shift it. Personally I would not give grit to an impacted bird. The crop is not thick enough to take the abrasion of massaging with grit inside it like the gizzard is designed to do and that may lead to inflammation and perhaps infection or yeast overgrowth. Also, the grit will struggle to pass through the mass of tangled vegetation and so it will just add to the impaction.

 

[Kellylwong]

Thank you so much for all that info! That must’ve taken you awhile to type. I appreciate your response. I’m going to see how she is in the morning and I’ll update.

 

[MandS]

Hi

We've been through this a lot recently with one bird. The crop was very hard and impacted.

We worked it free by giving her a little bit of olive oil (very little - like a few drops and syringes of water, which we squirted directly into her throat. I would then sit and gently massage for about 5 minutes. Leave her, then try again a few hours later.

It worked. The liquid and massage will slowly break it down. Don't expect a miracle immediately, just keep doing it and it should go in a day or so.

Good luck

 

[Kellylwong]

Today is day 4 of working on this. She’s probably had it for a day or two prior to us noticing. When I checked on her this morning, she had pooped 4 big balls of grass, yet her crop is still hard and full. When I get her to drink water it gets all squishy and it’s much easier to massage. The Chicken Chick told me if she has sour crop (which I’m guessing she does as well, since the smell is horrendous) that it also needs to be treated with copper sulfate, or it will not clear up on its own. My husband, who would’ve done the surgery, will be gone the next three days (he’s with MLB baseball) and I really don’t want to have to do the surgery if I don’t have to. Do you think this will actually clear itself if I keep doing what I’ve been doing? Or is it a sad, slow death for my sweet girl?

 

[Kellylwong]

I’ve also been giving her a “broth” of chicken feed mixed with lots of water. She mainly drinks the water off the top. When it gets down to the wet food I add more water. She’s bone-thin so I know she needs some nutrition and if that’s what it takes to get her to drink water. She’s done with me syringing oil in her beak. She practically breaks her own neck freaking out when I try. I’ve tried with someone holding her wrapped in a towel, too. It’s a no go.

 

[rebrascora]

Try feeding her chunks of solid coconut oil instead of trying to get liquid oil into her. I'm told most hens take it willingly. Also try smooth peanut butter which is high in oils and protein and should go through her impaction quite easily with massage and give her a calorie boost. You might also mix a little honey with the peanut butter.

If she is skin and bone now this has been going on for weeks not just a few days. They don't lose body condition overnight. Don't worry about not noticing it sooner. It happens to all of us, because chickens do their best to hide it when they are sick. I massaged one for 2 weeks before it fully cleared and I dread to think how long she had had it before that, as well as the 10 days I massaged Vippy before opting for surgery. Mine have never gone sour though. I don't know if that is because I feed them fermented feed or because they hadn't been getting any unprocessed grains scratch etc, which harbour yeast spores or if sour crop can be a result of the crop becoming inflamed from massaging when they have grit in the impaction.... probably a number of factors. Hopefully the acidified copper sulphate will sort it and then you just have the impaction itself to contend with. Have you tried the Dulcolax stool softener (without stimulant) yet as that would be the next step up from oil and massage. I think if you can continue to keep fluids with a small amount of nutrients in it going through her she will survive until your husband comes back and may improve in that time. It is still early days for the massage to work, but the important thing is to prevent her from eating things that will make it worse whilst you are trying to fix it. The soupy pellet mash is ideal although you will find unmedicated chick crumbs soaked/dissolved in water will give her a little more nutrients than layer. You can usually buy a small bag and can feed any left over to your other hens who will be happy to gobble it up.... just make sure they have access to oyster shell if they are laying. This girl does not need the calcium in layer feed because she is a long way off producing eggs right now and too much calcium when her body is not using it will just mean her kidneys have to work harder to remove it, so better with chick crumbs that have less.