Sour crop

[casportpony]

This is the free online Plumb's Sixth Edition.

It's a little dated, but still has good info:
http://www.armchairpatriot.com/Home-Vet/Plumb's Veterinary Drug Handbook [Desk Ed.] 6th ed. - D. Plumb (Blackwell, 2008) WW.pdf

 

[Bogtown Chick]

What a day Jackson. My fingers and toes are crossed. Sour crop is a hard one. Overwhelming that it takes 3-4 of us to help on here. Let alone with a beloved chicken waiting on you while you pray the medicine you find works.

We have a country vet for the dog. And the bills are extraordinarily fair. I’ve also heard that he’s quit taking more patients. Booked to the gills.

 

[TwoCrows]

Sounds like you had a successful visit to your vet! Not all vets are avian trained so when you find one, hang on to them tightly!

How is she doing this morning?

 

[critterkeeper25]

Sour crop......ugh! I have dealt with more than my share of this. Two Crows saved my hen from this. Said hen lived for a year after being pulled back from deaths door twice while I was treating her. She developed it again this fall. Sadly I couldn't save her this time and had to euthanize.
I have another hen in the garage now for the same thing. A Rhode Island Red hen. She was lethargic, I picked her up and fluid ran out of her beak. Started off treating with wormer and Corid. Followed up by treatment with miconazole. She was yeasty. Now, three weeks later, she has been packing in the feed and consuming a quart of water a day, thus flushing said food in floppy piles on the dog crate floor. She is, however pooping normally and has passed several cecal poops, instead of the tiny greenish pellets surrounded by water that she was passing in the beginning.

We lost 6 chickens this year from predation by a local fox. And we lost our beloved Sweetheart from sour crop probably due to some internal damage caused by the blockage she had last year. She had a huge rope of hay blocking her digestive tract. It took lots of treatment to clear it out. Dulcolax helped with that, I believe.

My spirit/soul is exhausted from the stress of treating chickens and their loss. I need a happy ending.

 

[casportpony]

(Also, just a note-- I've never ordered from them before three seconds ago, but you CAN order Nystatin from this website without a Rx. No idea if it'll show up or not since I'm not familiar with the vendor, but I thought I'd share! I ordered since if this chicken needs 6ml twice daily, I don't have nearly enough on hand!: http://www.firststatevetsupply.com/store2/antibiotics/water-solubles/nystatin.html )

That's great to know, thanks! If you run out before it gets to you, call the vet and ask him to call a prescription into your pharmacy. There's also a veterinary pharmacy that offers free overnight shipping on new prescriptions:
https://www.roadrunnerpharmacy.com/

How is she today?

 

[TwoCrows]

Sour crop......ugh! I have dealt with more than my share of this. Two Crows saved my hen from this. Said hen lived for a year after being pulled back from deaths door twice while I was treating her. She developed it again this fall. Sadly I couldn't save her this time and had to euthanize.
I have another hen in the garage now for the same thing. A Rhode Island Red hen. She was lethargic, I picked her up and fluid ran out of her beak. Started off treating with wormer and Corid. Followed up by treatment with miconazole. She was yeasty. Now, three weeks later, she has been packing in the feed and consuming a quart of water a day, thus flushing said food in floppy piles on the dog crate floor. She is, however pooping normally and has passed several cecal poops, instead of the tiny greenish pellets surrounded by water that she was passing in the beginning.

We lost 6 chickens this year from predation by a local fox. And we lost our beloved Sweetheart from sour crop probably due to some internal damage caused by the blockage she had last year. She had a huge rope of hay blocking her digestive tract. It took lots of treatment to clear it out. Dulcolax helped with that, I believe.

My spirit/soul is exhausted from the stress of treating chickens and their loss. I need a happy ending.

We can't always save them. Sometimes they have internal issues, the crop trouble being a secondary problem. I recently had a bird with endless crop issues and I finally took her to a vet, turns out she had an enlarged heart! I was only treating the crop issues, not knowing about the heart, nor could I have done anything anyway. I had to have her put down too. Unfortunately this is a part of chicken keeping. I suffer greatly when I lose them. I lose part of myself each time. But the joy of the birds keeps pulling me back to never letting go, always keeping more chickens.

 

[JacksonPearce]

Things are somewhat the same today-- her crop is MUCH less water balloony and much harder, so it seems to have gone from sour crop to an impacted crop (for better or for worse, I suppose). She's happily eating an egg every night, which I've put her meds and some olive oil in, and I gave her a bowl of water since she drinks much more from that than a drinker nipple (even though she'll inevitably flip it over eventually...sigh). I've been massaging her crop a few times daily, and it does seem to be going down a bit. She's also having more and more substantive poops rather than all liquid, so it seems like SOMETHING is getting through?

 

[Bogtown Chick]

I’ve too realized it’s part of keeping them. That losses happen. I used to blame myself quite harshly. Humbled . But as a person with poultry the last 6 years I’m less harsh on myself and know I do my best . Also learn what works in my set up and what doesn’t. Some hard lessons through the years.

One thing I should mention as a preventive is I give kale spinach or green lettuce as greens in the winter. The birds really miss it and I think they will grab up hay to get some green food if I don’t give it enough. I’ve seemed to avoided this problem but I’m not sure if it’s been luck or giving that hand full of greens each day when there’s snow on the ground.

 

[TwoCrows]

Things are somewhat the same today-- her crop is MUCH less water balloony and much harder, so it seems to have gone from sour crop to an impacted crop (for better or for worse, I suppose). She's happily eating an egg every night, which I've put her meds and some olive oil in, and I gave her a bowl of water since she drinks much more from that than a drinker nipple (even though she'll inevitably flip it over eventually...sigh). I've been massaging her crop a few times daily, and it does seem to be going down a bit. She's also having more and more substantive poops rather than all liquid, so it seems like SOMETHING is getting through?

Shes now on an antibiotic? This is a bad common reaction when you give antibiotics to a bird with a yeast infection. You need to tell your vet ASAP about this, the yeast will get worse and worse. Doughy crops are very difficult to treat and can kill the bird.

 

[casportpony]

Shes now on an antibiotic? This is a bad common reaction when you give antibiotics to a bird with a yeast infection. You need to tell your vet ASAP about this, the yeast will get worse and worse. Doughy crops are very difficult to treat and can kill the bird.

I think the vet found bacteria and yeast in the crop.