FOOD IN TRACHEA

[MaeM]

Help, I don't know if this is an emergency or I'm overreacting.

One of my hens was basically choking. I looked into her throat and I saw a piece of food in her trachea.

She "sneezed" violently several times and stopped acting like she was choking but the piece of food is still at the entrance of her trachea.

I tried to remove it with suction (using a syringe) but that suction is not strong enough. And there's no tool that's small enough to fit in there (moreover it'd be dangerous I think).

What should I do? I can't take her to the vet right now

 

[Eggcessive]

If it is chicken feed, hopefully she will cough it up. What does it look like? Does she have water to drink in front of her? How does she look and act?

 

[MaeM]

If it is chicken feed, hopefully she will cough it up. What does it look like? Does she have water to drink in front of her? How does she look and act?

It was some sort of vegetable. Cooked eggplant, I think.

She has access to water and I offered her some, but she didn't want to drink.

I finally called the vet because she looked like she couldn't breathe well (beak open, slightly tilting her head backwards).

The vet told me to hold her upside down, stretch one of her legs, and put it back to its place with a rapid movement (?). It sounds super random now that I repeat it, but then I checked again and the piece of food was no longer in her trachea.

I didn't see it fall to the ground, though. I don't know exactly where it went - down to her lungs, or up to her mouth (and then she quickly swallowed it?). But her symptoms disappeared. Phew?

Now she went to sleep with her friends, but what signs of illness should I look for in the next days, in case that piece of food happened to go down her lungs anyway? My guess is that something like that could make her develop aspiration pneumonia.

 

[Eggcessive]

Glad that she acting back to normal. Many times when you turn a chicken upside down, it may cause them to throw up crop contents. So I wouldn’t attempt that again, unless she gets something stuck again. If she had aspirated, she would be having labored breathing and in distress. Hopefully, the emergency is over. Good luck with her.