Problem child

[Jamie Molihan]

Hildegard is a sweet girl who loves to cuddle and will happily fall asleep in your arms while you are binge watching tv. She is also going to give me a stroke. She has always been very curious, always searching and pecking and exploring. We ended up with an impacted crop, we took care of it, then she got sour crop, we took care of it, then she had a crop full of grass and water, we took care of that too. Now after all of this my vet said that she has a pendulous crop and not much can be done, but some of my wonderful chicken hoarder cohorts on my helped me with a solution...enter the chicken bra..I will be making that today. Now in the mean time I have had to burp her every single day because she will fill herself up with dirt until she is vomiting and her crop is dragging on the ground. Yesterday she coordinated a jail break with Henrietta and Blanche (Enchilada was to fat to participate) and they were having a girls night out in my not that well fenced front yard. Now Henrietta has a mark on her beak and Blanche (who is a lazy girl) has dirt feathers. And Hildegard, my problem child and my heart, looks like she is trying to smuggle fruit again...damnit. How do I correct her eating disorder? How is she ever going to get better if she won’t quit pecking at every spot she sees? She even tries to eat my freckles.

 

[azygous]

How old is Hildegard? What sort of grit to they get? Have you checked your soil to see if it produces the right sort?

 

[Jamie Molihan]

They are all about seven weeks old, they all get free feed chick grit with probiotic. The dirt in my yard is a mix of regular soul and small rocks. It’s a pretty urban soil. The other chicks don’t have the same problems as she does. They have a chicken coop with an enclosed run and the get let out in the morning to run about the fenced in backyard.

 

[azygous]

Seven weeks is awfully young to be having all these crop problems, let alone pendulous crop.

It makes me suspect she has chronic impaction throughout her digestive system. Would you be up for trying a harmless treatment to see if it can cure her problems?

It's very simple and safe. You need coconut oil in its solid state for ease of administering. If you can get the kind that hasn't been refined and still tastes like coconut, it will be a breeze to get her to take it.

You want about a teaspoon of oil and break it into pea-size bits. See if she will eat it a bit at a time. If not, the solid chunks are easy to slip into her beak after prying it open. Get the entire teaspoon down her.

On the second day, do a molasses flush. This will cause mild diarrhea for a short period and will clean her out the rest of the way, flushing the crop, the intestines and gizzard. You want about a teaspoon in a cup of water and give it to her as the sole water source.

This should clean her system out and her crop should shrink back to a proper size, her being still a baby. But try to avoid long grass from now on. Keep you chicken range areas mowed to avoid this. It could be a problem for all your chickens that you simply do not need.

 

[Jamie Molihan]

She loves solid unrefined coconut oil, I will do it again and give her the molasses like you said and see how it goes. Boy is she going to be mad at me for taking her away from her sisters, she will holler for them off and on all day.

 

[GC-Raptor]

She needs Granite Grit to grind up any food other than crumbles or pellets.
At 7 weeks she can have adult size Poutry Grit. GC

 

[Jamie Molihan]

Ok, I will switch their grit out. She has been having crop issues since we brought her home from TSC, she is active and eats and drinks and poos, but her crop has never been normal. And she is losing ground in size to her sister. I hope she bounces back when I get her all fixed up. If the next try doesn’t work I am going to look for an avian vet, not just a regular vet.

 

[azygous]

On the grit, still make available the small gauge grit along with the adult size. The chicks will select the sizes they need.