Older Hen with Slow Crop: Slow Crop Treatment with Updates

[elissarules]

I just use pine shavings, not cedar for bedding. Cleaned out the whole coop today, sprayed for mites. Aired it out and replaced shavings. Good warm 60's day for it.
Hope your chicken does well.

Ooh, okay! What spray do you use for mites? And thank you so much. Your help has been incredibly relieving!

As far as I know the only way to keep her from eating is isolating her. If she's hungry she'll eat if there's food available. You may well have to buy a cage.
Make sure her area is well ventilated but that it's warm enough for her. Don't use a heat lamp or she'll never adjust.
Make sure she drinks lots of water and get her crop flushed out. I hope all goes well!

Will do! I have her in a trap cage, about twice her size so she can move a bit for the time being. I’ll probably go and buy one for the future. I may have a bigger one in the garage - I just haven’t looked.

And yeah! That’s my plan. Give her water for a day then see how she goes. Might empty her crop if it doesn’t get better.

 

[elissarules]

UPDATE: last night I put vaseline all over her feet and some dry areas on her face. I also put some diacotamaceous earth around, just bc I had already opened it.

The hen is drinking the probiotic water as we speak!! I put it in a bowl and checked the weather - no freezing or below freezing temps for the next 24 hours, so crossing my fingers it stays that way!

 

[elissarules]

ANOTHER UPDATE: Her crop is down!!!! I didn’t end up emptying her crop (I read too many articles suggesting otherwise) so I ended up feeding her about 8 or 9 this morning (plain Greek yogurt and layer crumble parfait ) and she ate a LOT! She was really hungry and chirping like mad!

So after school today I went to the store and picked up a medium-dog crate and put her in there. When I went to move her out I squished her crop and it was SO SMALL compared to before. You can see how large it was in my OP. But it’s about 1/4 of that size now! There’s still some squish so I’m going to keep her on a probiotic diet (probiotic-mixed water and yogurt parfait) for at least until a week since I put her in the cage. I’m going to keep updating this because I hate whenever people don’t let them know what’s going on!

Anyway, I mixed some dry scrambled eggs with her parfait and gave her some fresh water.

IM SO EXCITED and HAPPY! I’m really looking forward to seeing how she goes.

 

[elissarules]

SORRY IF IM ANNOYING ANYONE WITH THESE but I’m just trying to keep a record of what I did to see if it worked or not.

So yesterday I checked her crop at the end of the day and it felt big again. So I decided to have her “fast” again. Her only drinking probiotic water really cut down the size of her crop (or, at least I thought so last time. I’m starting to fear I imagined it), so I think I’m going to do some sort of on-again off-again type fast.

Today, including last night, I only provided her with the probiotic water. She has crazy diarrhea. I mentioned it to my mom and she said that probiotics can have that affect. Is this true? My mom said it’s probably helping her flush the toxins out. Would this also be the case?

I hope so. I feel pretty good about the process. Having her flush out her crop with probiotic water, eat some yogurt, then do the whole thing over again. In the meantime, she has freshly washed feet as of yesterday and vaseline all over them. I’m slowly but surely trying to crack at the whole thing.

With warmer temps I’m going to try and crack at the mite problem a little harsher and work on ventilation. It may be too little too late but it’ll help the future flock I want to get. Fingers crossed!

 

[N Sully]

Watching to see answers to your questions. Hope it all works out for you.

 

[pasuit]

Forget diatomaceous earth it is not effective. Looks like she scaly feet. Apply vaseline. You have lots of issues with her. You need to be sure your coop has adequate ventilation. Posting pictures will help give people an idea what you need there.
I would try to isolate her so you can treat her crop issue. Even if you have a garage or someplace to keep her temporarily.
I am sure other members will assist you in the morning. Good luck with your hen.

 

[pasuit]

A pic of the coop might help.

 

[elissarules]

Watching to see answers to your questions. Hope it all works out for you.

Thank you! I hope so too!

A pic of the coop might help.

I plan on focusing on the coop issues later. I need to fix the poor baby's sour crop and mites first. I do plan on making a separate thread focusing on what's best for the coop I currently have! Thank you for your help!

UPDATE 4: So this morning I checked her crop about 4 minutes after I fed her. I gave her 1/2 yogurt mixed with extra probiotic, mealworms, grits, and the other half being layer crumbles. Anyway, it seemed smaller AGAIN! So the "fasting" is definitely working. I even felt like...grits in there? I felt the crop of my younger chickens to compare. Hers is definitely more spacious and doesn't have as much grit in there as the younger ones, but it's definitely an improvement.

I think I'm going to only feed her in the morning now, and take away the food at night on her eating days so I can get a really good judge on how her crop is working.

Just read too that yogurt can cause diarrhea in chickens. Which is good, since for a minute I was panicking that she had Newcastle's disease (or whatever it is).

Another thing...ugh! I made a mistake! The dog crate I bought came with a removable tray for cleaning, so I've been using that so I can wash the feces off... Problem is I caught her eating some of the poo today! So I'm going to have to remove the tray, flip the cage upside down (the bottom of the cage has very wide-set wires), and prop it on a stand so she can't interact with it. It's probably for the best anyway: cleaning up after her everyday was really gross, and she was sitting in her poo until I cleaned it...

So things are moving along pretty well. I feel pretty secure in how things are going. Hopefully tomorrow she looks even better!

 

[micstrachan]

You are doing a great job. If she contnues to have crop issues, she may have pendulous crop, in which case a crop bra could help her.

 

[elissarules]

You are doing a great job. If she contnues to have crop issues, she may have pendulous crop, in which case a crop bra could help her.

Thank you sooooo much for this comment! It's really encouraging to hear this! I looked into a crop bra. I may need to do it for her - her crop was very large. She is a really happy bird and I'm going to do my best to make her years happy! <3 Thank you so much for your comment, really!