Sour/pendulous crop

[azygous]

At age eight, she may have an underlying issue that's slowing down the crop and making her lethargic. it's impossible to diagnose, but there's a decent chance it's cancer in the reproductive tract. When crop issues persist after trying all you have done, it often boils down to cancer. The only way to know for sure is to open her up after she dies and look for tumors. They are very obvious and you don't need an expensive necropsy to tell you what they are. I had a hen like yours. She died and I found what looked like bean soup in her abdominal cavity, she was so riddled with cancer tumors.

 

[Eddie12109]

Ok so
She is back to eating some and she seems happier than she was.
I give her scrambled egg and lettuce and she loves eating them and she will eat a lot and she also eats some of the grass and scratch but her crop always feels empty.
is this possible when they are wearing a crop bra?
because I see her eating a lot but it doesn’t show in her crop like right after she eats I feel it and there is not much there. There is some but it doesn’t amount to the amount of food she ate.

 

[azygous]

Maybe you should try loosening the crop bra a bit and see how she does.

Watch her poop. If she's eating, it will produce a corresponding amount of poop.

 

[AmeliaBedelia]

You may also want to look into easy to digest food for a while? Like the chicken version of the "recovering from a stomach bug" diet? I'd be tempted to get a small bag of baby chick feed and make her some wet mash with scrambled egg in it as her main food. You could also mix in a little coconut oil. Seems like that would be easy to digest, and easy to track how much she ate.

 

[Eddie12109]

Maybe you should try loosening the crop bra a bit and see how she does.

Watch her poop. If she's eating, it will produce a corresponding amount of poop.

I did and it is better, she is having a bigger crop. She is eating but her poops have been small so she isn’t eating enough. After of all the sour crop not eating deal she has become pretty skinny so it’s starting to become a bigger issue. She should be gaining more weight though since she is eating.

 

[Eddie12109]

You may also want to look into easy to digest food for a while? Like the chicken version of the "recovering from a stomach bug" diet? I'd be tempted to get a small bag of baby chick feed and make her some wet mash with scrambled egg in it as her main food. You could also mix in a little coconut oil. Seems like that would be easy to digest, and easy to track how much she ate.

I will try that, I already have some baby chick feed and the other things. She has been eating a bunch of lettuce and scrambled eggs but I will try that and some other things as well. Thanks!

 

[Eddie12109]

also this is slightly random but on a chickens keel bone area, have you ever found a yellowish colored scab? Because one of my hens and now the one with pendulous crop had it. So it is just one scab and it just flakes off and it is right on the keel bone. Any ideas? I will take a picture of it tomorrow

 

[azygous]

Scabs on the keel bone often are from resting on a rough perch or the hard ground. Treat the scabs as you would any wound so it won't get infected. Find where she likes to sleep and pad that spot with some cushioning material, but find something the chickens won't peck at and eat.

 

[Eddie12109]

Ok so a little update:
She has been wearing the crop bra constantly besides a few hours every week. Her crop has been digesting but there isn’t much in her crop to digest. She hasn’t been eating much and she is still really thin. I have run out of ideas of how to treat her. I bring her in and give her some of her favorite treats and she eats some but she is more interested in foraging but she doesn’t get enough food to actually have her gain weight.
any more ideas on how I can get her food or any treatments?
like @AmeliaBedelia said, I have been giving her some coconut oil and scrambled eggs and also some lettuce and turkey. I haven’t yet given her the baby chick food but tomorrow I think I have time to. As I said before though, she isn’t eating much of it.
and I have been monitoring her poops, some have bile in them but some are normal, they are constantly pretty small.
she doesn’t poop at night so I can’t see her poops in the morning but whenever she poops when I am out there they have been either bile or small.

 

[azygous]

She needs time for her digestive system to return to full operating capacity. Having had my intestines overhauled at one time, my system was completely shut down for days after surgery, and it took baby steps, reintroducing foods. First clear liquids, then soft easily digested food in small amounts.

With a chicken, it will be similar. Gradual introduction of foods, grit, and probiotics such as yogurt or acidophilus tablets, soft mash, soft boiled egg, etc. It will require weeks to get her weight back up. This has been the pattern with all chickens on this site that have gone through what yours has.

She'll recover. She has you.