nasty full crop-baby chicks

okay...hopefully i did the right thing...little advice needed. This am i went to open the little chick house and noticed one of the babies (6 wks old?)was staying behind. She didn't look too happy and she was walking kind of sluggishly and i noticed her crop? was really protruding. I remembered reading somewhere about turning them upside down and massaging the crop which i did.....nasty stuff and copious amounts of it began to drain out of the crop..along with a gigantic clump of grasses..then more runny stuff. Chick really tolerated it well, and then went outside....so...
\i have just switched them from a growers crumble to a growers mash which has some grains in it. I put a small container of grit in the house....
Any ideas what happened..was it a too fast a switch? Do i have a belly up to the bar pig chick? All the others look fine, and she looks fine tonight? wondering about her lungs as i had her upside down for some time..(didn't think about it till later)
Thanks for the help!

You were lucky if you were able to dislodge the blockage. The problem is the dry grasses. It's like a crop full of rope and cannot move through to the gizzard but plugs things up.

Restrict access to dry, stringy things that get wound up and stuck. I hope the chick is okay and you got enough of it out! Good luck.

Was yapping with BigRock last night and I don't think that she got all the plug out. She said that the crop was full of thick stuff again, like porridge thick it reminded me of. The chick is on water only right now. Yes, about 6 weeks old. How do you get that something or other that is probably deeper in the crop making the blockage? That grass came up and out, but there must be more there? Hoping that some other responses can come to help her out. I am useless at that. Once I had, and only once, a little chick that had a huge crop. So massive I thought it was deformed. I picked it up and pushed lightly on the crop and horrid stuff spewed out. I am not so gentle with ability to be kind sometimes. I knew there would be work to do with that chick, and I did not want to do that work. I say no more. Bring on some advice for the gal. have an awesome day, CynthiaM.

Well, as Cynthia M says; more very thick almost like peanut butter thick. Chick is no isolated with a dish of water with a 1/4 tsp olive oil in it. 3 poops this am that look perfect. crop is still bulged out but not as bad as before, so i am hopeful that there is no actual blockage.. She is standing up and looking as alert as one can in a small cat carrier...
tonight after work, i will give her a nice massage in the crop, give her some blueberry water...and more olive oil. i am not sure when to give her some food though...have some chick starter here and i could leave some of that out for her. Also some sites suggest feeding yogurt, some suggest actually flushing the crop with baking soda and warm water?

I'm not sure if its the same thing, but I have a dark cornish I bought at auction that gets a massive, spongy crop on occassion. It'll last for days, if not a week or two, and then go down. It's painful for her, I found out last week when I caught her to look at it because it was back up again. If I rub it while holding her, upside down or not, she'll bring up muscousy stuff. She's, otherwise, a spry bird. I've been keeping her around to add meat to the occasional chick she produces (about an egg or 2 every week, she's probably old).

Next flare up, I think, I'll harvest her, see what's really going on. But I'm wondering if its not the same thing?

Bigrock, google sour crop. The blockage may have been there long enough that you are dealing with that now.

If the chick is okay, getting some calories from liquid , I would NOT feed it until that crop has gone down even more.
I would keep it in the cat cage, keep an eye for a day or two and if that crop is getting smaller, introduce mushy food. Wetted crumbles. In small amounts. Watch. This is one of those situations that takes a while to judge if it's resolved or not. Fingers crossed.

coopslave wrote:Bigrock, google sour crop. The blockage may have been there long enough that you are dealing with that now.

She is just a baby...6 wks old and only the past two weeks have they had access to grass and different food in the past wk

Chick is still bright. After work, i made a concoction of baking soda and warm water and flushed her crop till it was empty. Then gave a dropper full of olive oil and left her with some blueberry water. She has drank most of the blueberry water and her crop is soft. She is still pooping, so still a good sign. Tomorrow, i will re-introduce chick starter as it is so easy to digest...She looks good

FOrgive me if I sound preachy...yes, chick starter is easy to digest. But digestion is not the issue. Digestion happens in the gizzard and gut. To get to the gizzard and gut food have to pass through the crop first. ANd if the crop is blocked, not much gets past the blockage.

At this point how easy something is to digest is not what you need to worry about. You need to focus on whether or not what is eaten can get through the crop. Since chick starter, when wet, turns to mush, it will have a good chance of going through. But when you're dealing with a blocked/impacted crop it is important to realize the difference between digestion (gizzard, gut) and a physical plug up.

(I'm sure you already know this and I'm preaching to the choir, but just in case you didn't...)

No Uno....good point and thanks for re-directing me. I am assuming because poop is happening there is no blockage? and am assuming also that the big plug of grass that i got was what the issue is. All these are assumptions on my part..So i totally defer to those who actually have experience. Gash...i have only had chickens for 10 months!
I read somewhere that this could be caused by gorging and then not gorging?... also i know nothing of this. This chick seems like a little piglet.. I have left the chick starter in the kennel today...and i can't go home and take it out at this point..so will just have to see what happens when i git home. Please keep firing stuff at me...i have my big girl panties on and can take it....it is all good information and i need all the help i can get..so thanks

and i also forgot that digestion does not in fact happen in the crop.....

I've had an adult bird with a blocked crop and you'd think they'd quit eating when food got stuck. But no. Because no food is passing into them, the bird feels hungry, is not getting enough nutrition and in fact begins to starve to death. So even with a jammed crop, they just keep eating. Then that stuff sits in there and ferments which causes other problems, like sour crop.

WIth my adult, I did not notice the crop problem until she began to stagger around. I picked her up and she was so light! She weighed nothing. Her breast bone stuck out like a knife. She had been starving for a long time and I had not noticed. A huge, plugged crop but dying of starvation.

Hub and I did surgery on her, and she lived.

I had another chick who I think had a burst crop. This bird's crop was huge, but I could feel grain and other stuff very distinctly through the skin. It almost looked like the whole breast was stuffed with junk, not just the crop. This bird, when tipped, produced lots of mucous. It walked funny and sounded funny and for reasons I do not know, that crop never recovered, no matter what I did. I ended up destroying the bird since it never seemed to recover from whatever was wrong.

String, twine, fishing line, if a bird accidentally starts swallowing something like that, that will make a problem in the crop. A bird can't actually spit something out, so once they've made the mistake of swallowing the end of some string, it's all got to go down. If string ever comes out one end of your bird, (doesn't matter which end) DO NOT PULL IT, just snip it off and hope it works its way out.

Your chick will likely be fine. Wet crumbles will easily filter through the crop. But leave him with NO FOOD overnight and feel the crop in the morning. It should be empty. If it is not, you might still have a plug up in there.

The only way to know for sure there is no blockage, even a partial one, is that the crop totally empties over night. So full when go to bed, remove food, should be empty in the morning when you check on it.


Some info for you:

Although there are several presentations for crop issues in chickens, the root cause, and the actual disease is usually the same. When chickens gorge themselves on long, fibrous foods, their crop (and occasionally gizzard) can become blocked. Sometimes this results in an impacted crop, which is a crop that is full of a tangle of fibre that is firm, dry and relatively hard. Sometimes, the bird will drink a lot to try to help pass the blockage....this will result in sour crop, which is a crop full of watery, half-rotten, acidic soup that actually smells worse than it sounds. Sour crop may also be associated with fungal infection, although there is some question about whether the fungus causes the poor emptying of the crop, or is a result of it.

Treatment for crop disorders involves 1) emptying them as appropriate and 2) treating for secondary infections if necessary. Sour crop can be helped by holding the bird face-down, at about a 60 degree angle, and massaging the crop towards the throat....the stinky mess should come out like vomit, and reduce the swelling. Be sure to let the hen breathe between bouts of massaging, and keep her inside for a couple days after, feeding soft foods and adding a little bit (1tbsp/gallon) of baking soda to the drinking water to combat the acidity. Do NOT use cider vinegar to treat this, as it only adds to the acid burden. Treatment with an anti-fungal agent might be of value, but often, once the sour crop is dealt with and the hen is back to eating well, it is unnecessary.

This was from the Chicken Chick website.

Chick has been good two mornings in a row; crop completely empty in the morning. So, now i am wondering do i just re-introduce the growers mash which has quite a bit of whole/cracked grain in it. Do add grit first in a dish....do i mix the growers mash with the baby crumbles? Do i keep her on baby crumbles for another day or so?

ONe of my buff orpingtons had a sour crop. I used colloidal silver to kill the bacteria inthe crop. She fully recovered. It
could be helpful to rid the crop of bacteria in case it is contributing to the problem.
Geri

Ah, another colloidal silver believer, smiling. never thought about that for killing bacteria in this particular type of incident. Bet it would indeed work.

BigRock, give me a call later on, probably when you are more up and around outside, smiling. If we don't touch base first. I have some thoughts here. She needs to now be feeding for surely. I would get her on some food. If the crop is clear, anything should be able to pass on through, no matter what you feed her. If she plugs up again, you will know that the passage is toally plugged. Have wonderful days, CynthiaM.

I dealt with this last year, and I introduced grass and grains back to early. She got sour crop almost immediately again and couldn't handle the second bout. Don't be in a hurry to put her back on hard stuff. Keep it easy and give the crop time to heal and repair. I know for mine two weeks wasn't long enough.

When I researched about it I found some folks who were never able to put a sour crop survivor back on grasses.

Coloidal silver.....where does one come across such stuff? Does it list uses and doses on the package?

BigRock, silver colloided in distilled water has been around for many hundreds of years. Silver kills bacteria. Silver is imbedded in some types of Johnson and Johnson bandaids nowadays, hospitals use it extensively for burn victims. Silver water kills the parvo virus in dogs (been there, done that, a living proof of a parvo survivor at my Daughter's home), rejuvenates cells for regrowth with burns and wounds. Used in conjunction with honey too, you have miracles in the medicine chest. There is an old tale of how before refrigeration units, women put silver dollars in the milk to prevent spoilage, those experiences go on and on and on. Why do you think that only a SILVER bullet would kill the vampire, the vampire is a bacteria, smiling.....

I am going to direct you to this post I made some time ago. Get Hubby to make you a little generator, get some silver rods, get some sea salt, get some distilled water, get some dark bottles and make your own, for pennies a quart. Health food stores sell colloidal silver water and it is over $10 for 750 ml, very costly and not enough people know that we can make it ourselves for nothing, compared to what companies charge. Have a wonderful day, CynthiaM.

https://wcps.canadian-forum.com/t2592-obsessive-yes-i-am-colloidal-silver-water-2-pictures?highlight=colloidal

You know, Big Rock. I moved my brooder babies out to the coop over the weekend and, as I moved them, I noted all of them had full, massive crops. I doubled the amount of waterers (even though they never emptied them) out in their pen and the issue is gone. Huh!

baby has been fine for two days now...she is out with the others, eating away..and her crop is normal....go figure..
will definitely check out the colloidal silver link...thanks cindim

Well girl, for surely, hats off to you!!  Sometimes this little bit of TLC is such a good thing.  Nice to hear that she is well.  Have an awesome day, CynthiaM.