Sour crop??? Help!!!

[Eggcessive]

Hoosier Pullet, sorry that your thread seems to have been hijacked. How is your chicken doing today?

 

[rebrascora]

@ladyearth

There is obviously some fluids getting through if she is pooping liquid, so that is a positive, but she can only survive so long on fluids alone. She needs to be kept somewhere warm because she is not getting enough nutrition through her system to keep herself warm and she will be burning off her body reserves at the moment to maintain body temperature and survive.
If her crop is so full of fluid that it is refluxing when you handle her, then you need to empty some of that out before you massage her. You will need to do this by holding her so that her head is lower than her body and tipped slightly to the right and massage from what would be the lower part of her crop if she was upright, forwards so that all the debris that is settled and clogged up in the bottom of her crop starts to get broken up and some of the gunge comes up. It is risky, but she is going to die if you don't manage to unblock things and if she is refluxing fluids when you pick her up or massage her normally, then you have nothing to lose. Watch some You Tube videos that show you how to do it. You may have to work at it for half an hour or so, giving her little breaks in between, just to get a little bit up and you may have to do it several days in a row or even twice a day to get things broken up enough. After you have been successful at getting her to vomit some up, then allow her to drink a little electrolyte solution and massage in the normal upright position.
She will not poop solid poop until you get that crop working properly and she can start to eat food, so don't worry about the liquid poop. You cannot expect anything else.
Once you get some of the gunky fluids out of it, so that you can massage it properly, feel for a putty type mass near the bottom, as that is what will be clogging things up and palpitate that to try to break it up.
There is no point in giving her grit at this stage as the crop is not thick/strong enough to grind up that debris and grit is not going to be able to pass into her gizzard through that debris if food can't, so grit will only me things worse.

At this stage, my feeling is that there are only two things that might work..... surgically removing that debris from her crop by cutting into it through her skin and physically pulling it out..... or trying to break it down by intensive massage. I can talk you through the process of surgically removing it but it is not for the faint hearted. If a vet is not an option and you don't feel like you can do the surgery yourselves, then you need to be very committed to vomiting and massaging to try to clear her and just giving her liquid feed... ie electrolytes, whilst you do so. Anything else will just get clogged up in the current blockage and ferment or rot, making it worse. You have nothing to lose at this stage because she will die if you do not get things moving, so don't be timid about massaging her.
My personal opinion is that a crop bra will not resolve this problem but may help her if/once you get the blockage cleared.

Good luck with her

Barbara

 

[ladyearth]

Hoosier Pullet, sorry that your thread seems to have been hijacked. How is your chicken doing today?

sorry if i hijacked. i thought it was my thread since i got an alert so at wits end

 

[Eggcessive]

sorry if i hijacked. i thought it was my thread since i got an alert so at wits end

Ladyearth, if you click on your screen name, it will take you to your page, where you can click on "threads started." That might help you find your threads. We are all just here to help, but it does get confusing when others start asking for help, and the person in post number one is no longer the main person who needs help.

 

[Ladybird CA]

oh wow just noticed that ladyearth is a different person from the original poster

Hope both hens turn out ok

 

[HoosierPullet]

No big deal about being hijacked! We are all here to help one another.

My barred was doing do well, eating normal, pooping normal, acting like her old self. Unfortunately this morning my hubby found her in her nest box and she had passed. We think she may have had an underlying issue that caused the crop issue and her early passing.

 

[rebrascora]

So sorry to hear she didn't make it. There are a number of ailments (usually reproductive issues) that can constrict the gut and cause the digestive tract to get slow and backed up, resulting in sour crop. This is more common with birds over 2 years old. Most of these underlying causes are terminal
It must have been so disappointing to find her dead when you had made such progress with her.

 

[biophiliac]

Sorry for your loss.

 

[Eggcessive]

Very sorry to hear that she died. If you would like to get a diagnosis, you could refrigerate her body, and send it to your state vet or poultry lab for a necropsy. Instead, if you are up to it, you could do a limited necropsy at home, to look at her intestines, crop, the inside of her gizzard, liver, and abdominal contents for anything unusual. If you do that take pictures and post here for any opinions. Of course, it is fine just to bury her in the yard.

 

[HoosierPullet]

We decided just to bury her. We found a small box, wrapped her in a pink towel and told her goodbye. I just feel like a failed her. She is the first chicken we have lost out of this flock. But we have 9 other beautiful hens to look after and she is probably loving roaming the hills of heaven looking for worms!