After day three, we found her dead. It appeared that her body shut down. Her crop was filled with fluid and she had not pooped that night. Each day of hand feeding was more difficult for her to swallow. We suspect is was a form of Mareks, since we have a positive flock.
One of her flock mates also had a crop issue the same week that we were trying to resolve. We got most of the grain to pass out of the crop. However, by day 3 she still had some corn kernels and some other grains. So for three days, we would vomit her once a day. A few grains would come out during the vomit. Then we would feel a few more grains later in the day that must have come from her proventriculus. She was not eating any grain. My conclusion was that there must have been a tumor blocking the grains from going to the gizzard. On day 7 she was very weak, and hand feeding was not helping. Her poop that had the solid portion of green was now to a thread diameter. The green part of the poop was getting narrower each day.
We tried all the advice we could do on our research. We even tried the inserting a feeding tube down to where it would stop, believing perhaps we could locate a blockage.
We do have our flock on preventative Baicalin mixed in their feed.
We finally made the hard decision to let her rest in peace and did the cervical dislocation. It was a draining week for us emotionally as we tried our best to resolve and knew it was time to say good bye to our Sunny hen. We have done 5 necropsies over the years, and did not believe there would have been any thing that we did not already suspect.
Thank you for your follow up. It really appreciate your concern. Love and blessing so you and your family and flock.
