Sick Barred Rock - Lethargic, no appetite (edit: sour crop?)

t8rtot

Chirping
13 Years
Jun 8, 2010
19
0
77
Lawrence, KS
This is one of my lap chickens from my flock of 10. She is a Barred Plymouth Rock, 1 year and 5 months old. She's always been smaller than our other BRBs, but feels bonier than normal.

She started showing signs of lethargy on Monday of last week (today is Sunday). We've been diagnosing a dog with pretty advanced cancer, so I wasn't really paying close attention :( Her lethargy got worse, because I found her on Friday sitting on the bottom of the chicken run, with her eyes closed. I immediately took her to the vet in town that sees birds/chickens. She's not eating much, but seems to be drinking. She was very warm on Friday , but today my husband keeps remarking that her feet feel cool. Her comb usually sits straight up, but it has fallen to one side, but remains red.

Nobody else in the flock seems to be showing any symptoms.

No injuries are noted, and nothing odd (egg bound, broken bones, intestinal blockage) showed up on the x-ray that they did. She appeared to lay a shellless egg yesterday/last night - as she has lots of yellow caked to her rear.

I'm not sure what may have brought it on. She normally eats food that we have made at the mill - a very balanced concoction, but she seems to lack appetite. When we offer her a tomato, she seems to go for that - but we've tried baby bird food and she wants nothing to do with it.

Her poop is runny/watery/clear - with very little solid, so she appears to be drinking.

The vet prescribed 1/4 baby aspirin mixed with water (just to lower any potential inflammation). And a dewormer, just in hopes that it might help.

I would love to futher treat her myself, but we are also waiting on bloodwork to come back from the vet. Fecal showed no signs of parasites, so dewormer is near pointless.

She is normally housed in a 300 square foot run with 9 other chickens of various breeds. There is dry straw on the ground - And a 20 square foot coop with aspen shavings (but they prefer to sleep in the rafters of the run). She is currently being kept indoors, in a dog kennel with aspen shavings.

Help... I'm perplexed!!
 
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Also: She is a little more alert than she was on Friday. Then, she kept shutting her eyes and sleeping on my lap, even when we were at the vet.
 
Does she have a fever? Did the vet image her to know she hasn't got an egg stuck in there? I am no chicken expert but I wonder if she had an egg break inside of her and her body is fighting to clean that up. If you offer her hard boiled egg, will she eat that? Is she ravenous about the shell? Do you have accessible calcium for your flock? Hmmm, what a puzzler.

As a side note, I had one of my older barred rock girls take a similar turn- very lethargic, no appetite, harder and harder to rouse etc. I brought her into the house for supportive care, but we were also dealing with end stage cancer in our dog, so I wasn't as heroic in the methods w/ chicken friend as I may have otherwise been. Unfortunately, my hen slept away but I was surprised to note upon necropsy that there were no eggs visible and she seemed to have a lot of fat in her abdomen on an otherwise skinny frame and there seemed to be general inflammation through out her bowel that led me to suspect a long term, asymptomatic infection of some sort.
 
Hi there! The vet did a few x-rays, and said that she wasn't egg bound.

She won't eat scrambled egg, or the shell and we do have calcium available.

I'm starting to suspect sour crop - as her crop is a bit squishy. I was assuming that she was just drinking lots. Though I've seen her drink a few times, she's not drinking tons...
 
This sounds weird, but here goes: massage her crop and take a good sniff of her mouth. If it's sour crop, you'll smell that something is off (by my experience anyway). Apple cider vinegar in her water is a good first step.
 
Her breath didn't smell sour. She's stressing me out! She won't eat chicken food, but she'll eat tomatoes. She won't eat baby bird food (and I've never had a chicken refuse that).

Sunday her crop seemed pretty squishy, like she'd been drinking a lot of water.
Monday morning her crop was small and hard (not big and hard like impacted crop), but like she didn't digest all the way.
This morning (Tuesday) her crop seemed empty, except for a small lump.

I wonder if this needs to be taken out via surgery or something. Argh!
 
This sounds just like my Buckeye. I know this is an old thread, but I am wondering what was ultimately discovered with this chicken?
 

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