Sour crop recovery - to perch or not to perch?

[CrimsonIdol]

This forum has been great and likely saved my chicken's life. Now that things are on the up swing, I have a bunch of specific questions i haven't seen addressed, but I'm going to start slow with one:

Sunday night/Monday morning she almost died. Coughing, gurgling, wheezing, unsteady on her feet, not pooping, not eating, not drinking, going to a corner and putting her head in it to die.

I made her puke and she purt near suffocated on me, crawled into my lap, and I thought it was goodbye. But then she slowly stopped choking on her own puke and flicking her head around, and things calmed down.

Fast forward to today and she's eating and pooping like crazy. She ain't out of the woods yet, but she's 5000% better than she was.

I fashioned a perch for her in the cage were keeping her in, and right now she up on it for bed time.

Here's the question:

Her head is hanging low. Should I remove the perch and force her to just lay down on the ground?

Let's see if I can upload a file.

 

[Wyorp Rock]

I let the hen decide whether she wants to roost or not. Looks like she prefers roosting.

 

[CrimsonIdol]

So the sour crop issue seems to be resolved, but now after being back on dry food for 2 days her crop feels like a wad of dried out play dough. She wont drink. I thought after we switched her back to dry food (and not scrambled eggs, yogurt, and tomatoes that are loaded with water) she would resume drinking. She will not, and now she's got a dry ball of layer crumbles in her crop. Sigh.

 

[Wyorp Rock]

So the sour crop issue seems to be resolved, but now after being back on dry food for 2 days her crop feels like a wad of dried out play dough. She wont drink. I thought after we switched her back to dry food (and not scrambled eggs, yogurt, and tomatoes that are loaded with water) she would resume drinking. She will not, and now she's got a dry ball of layer crumbles in her crop. Sigh.

Re-check the crop first thing in the morning, if the crop hasn't emptied, then you may need to syringe or tube some fluids into her to help break up the crumbles.

Once you get the crop moving, offer her wet mushy feed. She may be holding out for eggs, yogurt, etc.

It's very rare that I change up diet when treating a crop problem, the hen stays with her flock and has access to normal feed and fresh water during waking hours.

 

[CrimsonIdol]

Re-check the crop first thing in the morning, if the crop hasn't emptied, then you may need to syringe or tube some fluids into her to help break up the crumbles.

Once you get the crop moving, offer her wet mushy feed. She may be holding out for eggs, yogurt, etc.

It's very rare that I change up diet when treating a crop problem, the hen stays with her flock and has access to normal feed and fresh water during waking hours.

We syringe her some water yesterday and massaged the crop and then it blew up like it did the first time and she did the whole "im dying" song and dance, where she couldn't keep her eyes open and wouldn't move at all or make any sound and kept laying down. She did poop about once every 2 hours so we just let it be.

This morning there was 1 normal chicken poop and her crop is mostly empty, but still a scoge ballooned.

She still will not drink water.

I bought nystatin online and it should be here Tuesday. The vet rejected my requests for an antifungal when she saw the bird because she was doing well, but she was doing well because I wasn't feeding her anything the yeast could thrive on. As soon as I gave her grains the problem came back. Sigh.


I took her outside yesterday to see her normal watering device and she was not interested. I dont know how to make a chicken want to drink water.

 

[Wyorp Rock]

We syringe her some water yesterday and massaged the crop and then it blew up like it did the first time and she did the whole "im dying" song and dance, where she couldn't keep her eyes open and wouldn't move at all or make any sound and kept laying down.

What's her poop like?

Is the crop watery when you massage it?

Could she be aspirating fluids when you massage or syringe fluids into her?

 

[CrimsonIdol]

She's been eating her fill of scrambled eggs with an occasional diced tomato treat every day. I occasionally topped the eggs with flock fixer. This morning she made a racket and we took her out to the coop where she laid a real egg. We brought her back in and she started drinking lots of water like normal again.

The nystatin should arrive today.