Crop size, the digestive process and what influence it may have on feeding regimes.

Great article with a good links for more information. Very helpful and I will save to share with people who have questions.
I enjoy your articles and find them very helpful. Keep up the amazing work.

Well researched article with lots of links to other articles that can help the reader understand more about digestion in poultry. Perhaps a few more photos would help to break up the article a bit to make it easier to read fully. I like the added personal experiences, and observations. Great article.

This article did a very good job of taking the key substance from several scientific articles to show that the role of the crop in digestion is much more complex than usually mentioned. But what I really appreciated was the writer's original contribution to put this in relation with very practical questions for backyard chicken keepers : such as how to feed and how soaking food should be taken into account ; the possibility that feeling out a "full crop" may not always be pertinent to evaluate either nutrition in the evening, or a blockage in the morning. I read only the first reference which I found instructive and rather accessible, but appreciated the bibliography, which I will take the time to read more thoroughly.

The interplay of structure, function and feeding regime in a chicken's digestive tract is not well understood, and this article aims to start filling that gap. It is well supported with references and links to authoritative sources of further information and experimental results.

Given the emphasis on the possible impact of adding water to feed, it would have been useful to include in the discussion the normal hydration of feed while in the crop. ("Results indicate that the contents of the crop are gradually moistened; reaching 50% moisture within approximately 60 min" cited article https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1056617119303939 with reference 4 there, where it is stated that "feed material in the crop was rather rapidly moistened to>40% moisture"). Birds that eat dry feed drink a lot more water than do birds that eat wet feed, and so the figures for grams of feed consumed should be accompanied by figures for grams of water consumed and those results compared with giving wet feed. Also, the term 'dilution' - common in the literature and liberally scattered across the pages of BYC, so easily repeated without a second thought - begs the question. 'Supplementation' is a more neutral term.

Closer proof reading or copy editing would have caught the remaining typos etc.

All in all, a thought-provoking article on an important topic.

Really interesting, well researched & thought provoking read, covers an area that I’m sorry to say I hadn’t much understanding of. Will have to work my way through the links

This is very helpful information. Understanding the digestive process in more detail will help us ensure proper nutrition for our chickens to give them the maximum quality of, what we hope, is a maximum life span.

It is far more important to us, to achieve maximum longevity over maximum egg production.