what is impacted crop?

[wildriverswolf90]

What is impacted crop and how does it happen?

 

[Judy]

There are some good threads on this on the FAQ page, near the top of the index page.

 

[chicklover16]

an impacted crop is when a chicken eats something (like a long piece of grass) that gets stuck in the crop so that food cannot pass through the chicken and everything the chicken eats just gets stuffed into the crop making it Really big and hard, if caught in it's early stages an impacted crop can be fixed by simply feeding the chicken olive oil and giving it's crop a massage, however if you wait too long to fix this problem you have to do surgery on the bird which can be very dangerous if you do not have any experience. several birds die from impacted crops.

 

[Pele]

Good question, and a good thing to know for new chicken owners.

Impacted crop is a term used to describe the condition of a bird who had eaten something that had lodged in it's crop. Normally they have rocks and hard objects tumbling around in the crop to grind things. Sometimes they eat something that can't be ground, or just gets wedged in there. This causes food-backup, and yeast or bacterial infections.

you can tell a chicken has this because their breath turns bad smelling on an unholy level, and the crop often bulges noticeably (and never goes flat like it does normall).