When I massage my hen's crop she acts like she's choking

[casportpony]

Can you post a picture of her poop?

-Kathy

 

[casportpony]

Most small animal vets will have tubes.

-Kathy

 

[jbs]

I'm definitely getting Di-Methox at the feed store and am going to give it to my hen in her water. I just gave her another dose of Albon via syringe, and did a pretty good job of squirting it down her throat, but then she flicked her head away and threw up not just the Albon, but also a bunch of water and other stuff that was in her crop. It's getting very frustrating.

I've read different things about holding a hen upside down to make her throw up. The first Avian vet I saw (a year ago) told me definitely not to do it, but she removed fluid from a sour crop hen with a tube before giving medication.

 

[jbs]

Dropping from this morning.

 

[casportpony]

I would also get some Safeguard for goats and treat her for capillary worms at 0.23ml per pound for five days. Does her crop empty by morning?

-Kathy

 

[casportpony]

You could also try to remove fluid with a tube.

-Kathy

 

[jbs]

I finally put my hen down and dropped her off at my state lab for necropsy. She had ovarian cancer. The report noted that she had many solid white nodules ("too numerous to count") in the spleen, gizzard, and intestines. The intestines were thickened by solid white tissue, causing them to be twisted and no digesta could move thru the tract. The proventriculus and gizzard were both distended with very dry food material, which the vet wrote was impaction due to obstructed intestines.

The vet also wrote that there was basically no normal ovarian tissue, that in the location of the ovary there was a large (5x4x5cm) solid white mass. The vet noted that she sees this sort of thing fairly often, but not in a 1 year old hen. She normally sees it in chickens that are 3+ years old. This has me wondering if I mistook this hen for one of my older EEs. I've got brown EEs that are 3 years old and a younger batch that just turned one year old.

Anyway, when I find a thread on BYC with a chicken that has similar symptoms as mine, I always like knowing how it turned out. No amount of antibiotics and hand feeding were going to do this bird any good. I clearly should have put her down weeks ago. The $15 I spent on the necropsy was money well spent. Even if I could have brought myself to cut my hen open, there's no way I would have seen everything that the vet did.

 

[Kristy1112]

I'm having an issue with one of my hens. It started as diarrhea and listlessness and has progressed to the point where she won't eat or drink. This has been going on for around 10 days. I figured out along the way that she had a bad mite infestation, so I dusted her (and the rest of the flock) for mites. She was still eating and drinking (and producing normal looking droppings) so I left her in the coop unless it was especially cold. Since she's stopped eating and drinking I'm keeping her inside my house. This has been 3-4 nights.

She does not have sour crop, but her crop is gurgly, it sounds like a person with an empty stomach. I've read several posts about impacted crop or gizzard, so in case this is what I'm dealing with, I've been giving her water with electrolytes and probiotics via an oral syringe. When I get some water into her crop it sounds gurgly again. She's producing watery stools. I've started giving her yogurt via the syringe, and she has some more normal looking stools, watery and green. I took her feed away when I read about impacted crop, but she wasn't eating anyway. She won't eat anything on her own now, not even hard boiled egg.

I've read about massaging the crop, but when I touch this hen's crop, she acts like she's choking. She'll stand up very straight and shake her head, like she's trying to clear something from her throat. I read that I should massage downward, so that's what I'm trying to do, but I still feel like I'm choking her. I don't push very hard. The crop is not huge, and I don't feel anything hard inside, but I'm not sure that I'd be able to detect an abnormality.

I once took a hen with sour crop to an avian vet in Baltimore and it was an awful experience. $175 and my hen died a few hours later anyway. The vet seemed very dismissive, said it's often an internal problem that causes sour crop, and my hen would likely die regardless of treatment. So I'm reluctant to take my current hen to a vet, but if I can find a different avian vet in the area I may try. For now I'm trying to load my chicken up on water and massage her crop, but I don't want to choke her to death. Can anyone give me advice on this?

I'm so sorry about your hen...I'm dealing with a similar thing I finally was able to find a vet after a few days and I think the one that just finally agreed to see me because I just kept calling here in Vancouver Washington all the vets are booked out solid they told me because they're short staffed and no one wants to come back to work because they were making more money I guess on unemployment so getting in to see a vet has been really difficult so he did agree to see me because like I said I was calling constantly it was $145 they wanted to do surgery to remove is better golf size golf ball size Mass and it was $2,900 but with the medication and everything it came to $350 which that's all I was able to do now I'm giving her soft foods with the lactose it's kind of an oil or laxative for the crop and antibiotics so it doesn't go sour and I'm giving her scrambled eggs I still give a little bit of olive oil mixed in with that so I can get her cuz she's not really wanting to eat she will if I hand feed her so I've been doing that and then I went and bought a crop support bra that holds her crop up which I've had to modify so it actually would fit her today she was at moving around more but now that I've fixed it and I put it on her tonight I will see tomorrow how it is but I just keep massaging her crop and giving her water I wish I was more helpful but that's what I'm going through right now and I hope you can find somebody that can help you a little more