Son's hen has severely swollen crop, what do we do?

[tulie13]

Eggs4Sale - check your Private Messages

 

[ANGELCHICK]

How will I know if I'm using enough pressure and not damaging the tissue. I'm afraid I'll do more damage than good. I massaged her crop while laying head down on my legs. Tried to get some of the liquid to come up using some pressure, nothing came out so I put small syringe of straight olive oil in her crop (I think), massaged again, nothing. I then made a mash of olive oil, milk and feed, more liquid than feed. She gobbled it up like she was starving and wiped her beak on my leg, so cute. She drank some water behind that and wanted to get down. She went straight to the feeder and started eating from the feeder. I took her from the feeder, made more mash she ate that, wiped her beak on my leg again and went to bed. See, I guess I'm just not convinced that I need to intervene. I hoped that the olive oil would grease things up and it would pass but it did't appear to have gone down this morning when I let her out. Will try the flush today if its not normal size when I get home from work. Thanks for the flush details. Will let you know.

 

[tulie13]

Quote:
If she is gobbling down food, the crop will likely not be "normal sized", it will be big because she has stuffed it. If you think she has a problem, isolate her from the rest of your flock so you can observe and control food intake and poops.

Her crop should be pretty much flat IN THE MORNING, after she has had all night for her "stash" to go down her gullet and digest. If it's huge in the afternoon, that's not necessarily a problem of any sort. It's when it STAYS huge that indicates you may have a problem - if it does not go down overnight to nearly flat, you could have something in there causing an impaction and food won't go down, or you could have rotting food in there causing a fungal or bacterial infection, and also causing the crop to "sit still", not wanting to pass stuff down. Fungal infections cause bubbles/swelling, so if your chicken is gassy, that might be your problem.

But if it's just "big" and it goes down overnight, you don't have a problem. Some chickens are just pigs and stuff themselves, causing the crop to be HUGE after eating. But if it goes down by itself, you are OK. Make sense?

 

[LynneP]

Had a similar experience, opted the gentler route. It took 5 days of intensive massage, I offer the process for your consideration. Zipfi is fine now, a very sweet hen who shows her appreciation every time I am with her. Tulie makes a good point, I'd consider that carefilly!

https://www.backyardchickens.com/web/viewblog.php?id=7693-sick-hen

I wish you the very best- this requires persistence, and can be challenging.

 

[Eggs4Sale]

I don't understand. I massage and massage, and I just tried being very aggressive and squeezing my thumb and finger together through the crop, and try as I might.. nothing. Just a lot of liquid. When she did throw up stuff, it was watery lay crumble with an occasional grass blade.

For breakfast, she ate a yogurt/lay crumble mash with polyvisol.
Then I sat with her and massaged a little, but she wanted to be with DS, not me, so that didn't go too well. Maybe she didn't like being squeezed so hard! It was when DS was going to the door to go feed the animals that she flipped out. She wanted to go with him. Guess who ended up going to feed the animals?

A while later, I crumbled up a piece of bread and soaked it in olive oil. She has eaten most of that.

I need to cool off. My face is still sweating. Gotta love summer.