Need help with crop/ from sweden

[Madde]

Hey!
I'm from Sweden so my English may not be very good but I feel desperate and this forum is so competent and much better than the Swedish forums that exist.

I have a 1 year old hen who has had a sour crop or impacted crop since Monday and has lived with us for rehabilitation, we give her paraffin oil and she only gets soft food (soaked pellets) and cottage cheese, chopped corn, scrambled eggs etc.

today her crop is much smaller (it has not been very big but it has felt spongy and not emptied during the night)
but it's saturday today and it's taken so long, i'm getting more and more worried, and every morning i have to feel her crop i'm so nervous and just want it to be empty. but it has decreased every day and today it was very small.

I mostly just want advice or if there is someone with experience of this who can give me hope that it can take time.
and right, we massage her crop several times a day.

her stool is watering with dissolved pellets in, and then the corn comes out whole ..
she even poops some blood sometimes ..
but her general condition is only getting better and better, she is alert and is herself more with each passing day.

hope someone can give me advice or tips or whatever, I love my sweet Ingalill so much.

 

[azygous]

No problem with your English. You have a much better handle on it and are able to express yourself very well, much better than a lot of Americans that have supposedly learned English since birth.

The corn coming out whole in the stool may be a sign of not enough grit in the gizzard. That is where most of the digestion of food takes place in a chicken. If the gizzard slows down, it can affect the crop emptying. If the crop contents sit too long, they ferment, causing a yeast condition and sour crop.

Grit is small sharp edged gravel that chickens pick up off the ground and swallow. Do your chickens have access to anything like that? It should be around half a centimeter in diameter, give or take. In the US we can buy sacks of it from a feed store.

Giving this chicken grit should help her crop empty the rest of the way. If not, continue the parafin. You could also add a teaspoon of molasses to her food or water. That can help stimulate the gizzard to digest and push out the rest of contents. With that, the crop should then empty.

 

[Madde]

just want to show Ingalill's rehabilitation cabin. my sweet little girl

 

[Madde]

NOW HER CROP IS EMPTY !!!
it's morning and when my husband went in to check the situation he comes back and says that I should feel her crop and the feeling I have been waiting for has finally arrived.

what should i think about now?
and when will she get out to her friends again?

 

[Perris]

Paraffin in lieu of coconut oil?

paraffin is recommended in old poultry handbooks, so I think it is more likely the trad remedy, before coconut oil was available here. (I don't know if either works or is better than the other.)

I think parafin is a European generic term for cooking oil

Not in the UK. Paraffin is heating oil - but there is a form sold for consumption by humans, again traditional remedies.

 

[Madde]

THANK YOU TO ALL OF YOU WHO HELPED INGALILL !!!
I am so grateful and happy for all the wise advice.
now my girl is back out with her friends and has been treated perfectly okay.
now we keep our fingers crossed that it continues to go well for her!
thanks once again.

 

[BDutch]

This is how I think/would deal with the situation:
I would just wait and see now and not try to rescue her if she is too damaged inside to get better.

I have learned that chickens know what they can eat (in general). Give good chicken feed but not spoil them with luxury food like mealworms or human food that is to salty or sweetened. If you offer grit in a bowl chickens eat it if they need it. Chickens who free range and eat grasses need grit too.

Probably its best not to attach too much with chickens. I love my chickens too but some chickens won’t get old. Diseases, parasites and predators are a common treats for a long chicken life.

I do try to keep my chickens healthy and free from parasites. But if they get sick I won’t give antibiotics. In the long run it’s often not a good solution to give antibiotics (and its certainly not good for human health care). Survival of the fittest is quit a good way to deal with weak chickens for maintaining a healthy flock.

If I have a single chicken with undefined health problems I take her apart if I am afraid its contagious or else I just wait and see.

 

[Shadrach]

@Madde
This is a good article to read for crop problems. There are others in the article section of BYC.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/ar...ntion-and-treatments-of-crop-disorders.67194/

 

[Perris]

BTW, where in Sweden are you? I have visited Stockholm and Uppsala, and someone's lakeside house in a forest about an hour from Uppsala (and canoed on the lake ), and I think it is a beautiful country. Also full of very nice people!

 

[Madde]

I did a search on the nature of paraffin. It appears that is what mineral oil is called in Europe. Mineral oil is perfectly safe for chickens. Olive oil is safe for chickens, too, and won't cause fatty liver in the few days she needs it to unblock her. You do need to avoid vegetable oils and canola oil since they are absorbed at a much higher rate and really aren't effective to alleviate a blockage.

Converting measurements into the metric system from US inches can get tedious. But I judge the grit my chickens get by eyeballing an eighth of an inch which, unless I'm wrong, is around 3 or 4 mm. No larger.

Even tiny baby chicks will pick up grit, and each chicken seems to instinctively know what size grit to pick up for their own bodies. Grit is as necessary to poultry digestion as our teeth are to our digestion. Without it, chickens will become constipated and subject to blockage as food gets stuck in the gizzard and can't move through.

If your chicken had such serious damage from coccidiosis that grit harms her, then she probably already would be dead. Grit is such an important part of chicken digestion, they really cannot live without it unless, like a human with no teeth, you put them on a strictly liquid or wet mash diet.

I did a search on the nature of paraffin. It appears that is what mineral oil is called in Europe. Mineral oil is perfectly safe for chickens. Olive oil is safe for chickens, too, and won't cause fatty liver in the few days she needs it to unblock her. You do need to avoid vegetable oils and canola oil since they are absorbed at a much higher rate and really aren't effective to alleviate a blockage.

Converting measurements into the metric system from US inches can get tedious. But I judge the grit my chickens get by eyeballing an eighth of an inch which, unless I'm wrong, is around 3 or 4 mm. No larger.

Even tiny baby chicks will pick up grit, and each chicken seems to instinctively know what size grit to pick up for their own bodies. Grit is as necessary to poultry digestion as our teeth are to our digestion. Without it, chickens will become constipated and subject to blockage as food gets stuck in the gizzard and can't move through.

If your chicken had such serious damage from coccidiosis that grit harms her, then she probably already would be dead. Grit is such an important part of chicken digestion, they really cannot live without it unless, like a human with no teeth, you put them on a strictly liquid or wet mash diet.

I do not think she was so damaged in the intestine that the gravel would kill her because then she should have died already, but considering that she had eaten gravel before.
but they had a lot of coccidia in their poop but are now healthy. but I still think she gets injured anyway as she is chronically loose in the stomach (watery stools)

I brought gravel to her and she started eating a lot, I was completely shocked. like she really wanted to.
she ate a lot of shavings which she had not done before and it felt like she wanted gravel. so hope so sincerely that it empties her crop once and for all.