Impacted crop

[Kawkawkaye]

For the past two days I’ve noticed that my hen Eileen has had a hard mass in her crop. It’s only the size of a large marble, but rock solid. I’ve dealt with impacted and sour crops before, but not sure how to approach this one as she is still eating and drinking fine– and the food she’s eating is getting digested fine (so it’s obviously getting around the blockage). There’s just that one hard lump left over. She’s having no other issues, and still as peppy as usual. Some other points of interest:
- She is nearly one year old, isa brown. A little underweight, but we are keeping on top of it.
- She is blind.
- Her current diet consists of mushed up pellets (ie. she has little reason to have something hard in her crop because she mainly eats soft food. Hard pellets and poultry mix are available to her, but she doesn’t eat it very often, and not in large quantities), a lot of dirt, grass (which she only has access to for 15 minutes each evening), eggshells. She gets occasional treats but nothing in the last two days.
- I’m confident it’s not sour (yet).
- As I mentioned, she is blind, so really she could’ve eaten anything

At the moment I’m just trying to prevent it going sour– giving plain yoghurt, ACV in water. I’ll be restricting her access to grass until this gets sorted, and have been adding more water than usual to her mush to keep things lubed up. Any other pointers? I really want to get on top of this early, even if the crop is mostly draining fine, since she is very vulnerable because of her blindness. I suspect that it’ll pass eventually without harm but I don’t want to take any risks with her.

Thanks all!

 

[Wyorp Rock]

Are you able to manipulate the mass at all?
If impacted with something like grass, you could try a stool softener, 1 time to see if that helps break it down. I would also give her a bit of coconut oil as well.

Curious if you provide grit (crushed granite).

https://www.backyardchickens.com/ar...w-to-know-which-one-youre-dealing-with.73607/

http://www.backyardchickens.com/a/impacted-slow-and-sour-crops-prevention-and-treatments

 

[Kawkawkaye]

Are you able to manipulate the mass at all?
If impacted with something like grass, you could try a stool softener, 1 time to see if that helps break it down. I would also give her a bit of coconut oil as well.

Curious if you provide grit (crushed granite).

https://www.backyardchickens.com/ar...w-to-know-which-one-youre-dealing-with.73607/

http://www.backyardchickens.com/a/impacted-slow-and-sour-crops-prevention-and-treatments

Thanks. I had a hard time manipulating it on its own, but had a go after she’d eaten and there was more in there to soften it (made the decision not to restrict food since it’s not completely blocked). Unfortunately there’s not much difference this morning.

She absolutely hates eating any form of grit, so I always feared for her crop from the start lol. We have it available in containers and she won’t have a bar of it. But she looooves attempting to eat it off the ground. There’s a patch in the yard that’s just grit and gravel and oyster shell, and she loves shovelling it down, although I’m not sure about her success rate or dirt to grit ratio I don’t know what goes through her lil chicken brain. Is she too proud? Does she believe that grit doesn’t appear in containers? I think she can’t smell it is the main issue, so she’s not convinced there’s anything there. So to conclude, her grit intake is questionable at best.

 

[Kawkawkaye]

Thanks all!
I massaged her crop every few hours, kept her food wetter than usual, topped it with a bit of oregano, and put ACV in her water, as precaution.
She’s now come good, but I’ll continue to moniter her and restrict her grass intake for the next week just to make sure it passes all the way through without complication.

 

[Wyorp Rock]

Thanks all!
I massaged her crop every few hours, kept her food wetter than usual, topped it with a bit of oregano, and put ACV in her water, as precaution.
She’s now come good, but I’ll continue to moniter her and restrict her grass intake for the next week just to make sure it passes all the way through without complication.

Glad she is better!
I would check the crop for several days and continue to give her normal feed whether wet or dry. No treats like grass, scratch, etc. until you are sure it's emptying for a few days.
A treat of scrambled eggs may be enticing.

The grass you give - is it long strands or do you chop it up?