Sickly bird, really large crop. . immature eggs, sort of droopy wings. . . Help, please!

[JKRopee]

Seminolewind, Thank you for acknowledging my loss. . I am very attached to my hens and this was a surprising turn of events for me. I've not had any health issues with by birds prior to this. . . I will be more observant from now on. .

 

[seminolewind]

Seminolewind, Thank you for acknowledging my loss. . I am very attached to my hens and this was a surprising turn of events for me. I've not had any health issues with by birds prior to this. . . I will be more observant from now on. .

I'm attached too. Even observant ones miss ill chickens because they're so good at hiding it.

 

[War Chicken]

Sounds like it could have been crop mycosis.

 

[Manningjw]

Sorry for your loss JKRopee. That was a very short window of noticing symptoms to her dieing.

We were lucky with our 2.5 year old Red Star. We noticed she quit laying eggs for a couple of weeks and slowly was becoming less energetic and not pooping. Eventually we took a good look at her and noticed her huge impacted crop. We started with oil/water then oil/water/yogurt syringed via a home made feeding tube so that she couldn't aspirate on it and several crop massages per day. After a couple days we graduated her to yogurt/mashed feed with some oil and water. She started pooping again and eventually her impaction passed. She just laid her first egg after recovery, some 1.5 months since her last healthy egg so she seems to be recovering quite well. We'll see how she is tomorrow after the gorged herself in the new area of the run they haven't been in for months.

I have heard multiple reports of the danger of emptying a sour crop and the risk of aspiration, I personally would only attempt it if I had run out of other options and felt there was just too much fluid in there. Our chicken started off as an impacted crop then progressed to a mild sour crop, very mushy which seemed to allow material to finally pass through.

 

[Fancychooklady]

Chickens are very stoic, and by the time they show symptoms it's often too late to treat. Goats are the same , they will not go down until they are in a really bad way. Just notch it up as a learning curb. And don't beat yourself up!