Silkie cochin mix not pooping.

[rebrascora]

It sounds like she may be impacted as well as sour as has probably been like that for some time. You may need to remove as much of the contents as you can before you start massaging her otherwise there is a chance she will reflux and choke.
My feeling is that this bird is very sick and will die if you don't take some action soon. If veterinary care is an option, get her to the vets asap.
If the vet is not an option, then familiarize yourself with the technique for vomiting a chicken by checking out some You Tube videos. Watch several so that you don't follow a bad example. It is risky, but not emptying that crop is more risky in my opinion. What is in there is stagnant and rotting and not going anywhere at the moment. It needs to come out so that there is room for what is left to be manipulated by massaging to help break it down. She should enjoy the massage or at least not be uncomfortable with it. If she isn't happy, the chances are you are being too rough. She will probably not enjoy being tipped upside down to vomit though, but that gunk needs to come out before you do anything else. You might want to invest in a catheter and syringe to tube liquids into her, to rinse her crop out and a stool softener like Dulcolax may help. If she is really bad, she may need surgery to remove the blockage and I can talk you through that if veterinary help is not possible, but once you get it at least partially emptied and well massaged, it may break up. Often in these cases it is a tangled mass of soggy fibrous material like grass or straw that clogs the outlet of the crop slowing the passage of food and water and sometimes even completely blocking it.
Good luck sorting it. It is no good dilly dallying with this as she will die if you don't get it unblocked.

The risks with vomiting are that she will inhale some of the vomit, so bring her upright and give her plenty of opportunity to breath between spewing up. Also, be aware that she will probably shake her head whilst vomiting and it will go everywhere, so wear an apron/overall.

Best wishes

Barbara

 

[RaptorChicken]

oh crap glad I saw this

 

[RaptorChicken]

good news; she pooped on the counter after I massaged her crop trying to get the impacted stuff out. (Don't worry I let her breath every few seconds.) I am home alone so I will have to wait till later for the rest of my family to get back. (She is too squirmy for me to hold her beak open!) They will be back in a few hours.

 

[rebrascora]

You don't need to hold her beak open, just hold her so that her head is lower than her body and tilted slightly to her right and massage her crop in that position. She will open her beak when she is ready to expel the stuff. It may take 10 mins or longer, but keep giving her a break to recover whilst you are doing it. Usually, when they are getting close to releasing some crop contents, they open and close their beak a few times, so if you see her starting to do that you know you are close and need to keep going, but if she becomes too distressed give her a break. Be guided by her response. I cannot imagine trying to do it with two people, the second person would just get in the way in my opinion but I can understand wanting to have someone else there for moral support whilst you are doing it when you haven't done it before. I've had some that absolutely refuse point blank to allow anything back out and others that it took 4 or 5 attempts to have success. The good news is that just the act of massaging their crop in that inverted position can help to break up the blockage because a lot of debris and sediment settles into the bottom of their crop once they have a restriction and clogs up in amongst the fibrous material creating a muddy dam inside them. Tipping them upside down and massaging helps to break down that sedimentary blockage. Make sure to give her fluids and then massage some more as you are looking to swill out that gunge.

 

[rebrascora]

PS. It's good that she pooped but she still has a long way to go. I find bantam cochins are particularly prone to crop issues like this. I don't know if it is because they are prone to broodiness and all that sitting around causes their crop to get slow or it is a genetic thing to do with being quite bosomy looking and there is perhaps more crop in front of the outlet than other breeds have, causing food to build up at the front and stretch the crop, causing pendulous crop and then slow crop as a result. I've had 4 of them with it. I understand how scary it is dealing with this especially the first time, but you really need to be quite assertive if you are going to deal with this yourself and not seek veterinary care..... I found the desperation of seeing them become skin and bone as they were effectively starving to death, helped me to have the courage to do what needed to be done. Once you realise they are going to die unless you do your best, it helps to spur you on and I can tell you that whilst there is some frustration when things don't seem to be working, the feeling of euphoria when you fix them is worth it 100 fold.
Be brave and good luck.

 

[Natanya]

After the impaction is all cleared I would recommend controlling her feed for the next three days, only feeding her after you've felt her crop has emptied, and keep her from eating grass and other heavily fibrous things so she doesn't have the opportunity to re-impact herself while her system recovers.

 

[RaptorChicken]

After the impaction is all cleared I would recommend controlling her feed for the next three days, only feeding her after you've felt her crop has emptied, and keep her from eating grass and other heavily fibrous things so she doesn't have the opportunity to re-impact herself while her system recovers.

all right I am going to do it now. But I was needing someone to hold her beak open so I could get some fluids in her. I guess I will have to be patient and empty her crop now. I will let her breath, don't worry I am very cautious.

 

[RaptorChicken]

just discovered she has worms. found one in her poop. Now I am gonna have to deworm her. *sigh*

 

[RaptorChicken]

how am I supposed to get her to drink now?

 

[rebrascora]

Don't try to worm her until you have got that crop sorted and she is eating normally again. Putting wormer into her crop when it is blocked will not achieve anything, so try not to worry about the worms right now and just focus on getting the crop working properly.

My suggestion was to get a catheter and syringe and feed the tube down into her crop to irrigate/flush it. Since you don't sound like you have got one I would try her with some sugar water as that may tempt her to drink and just dip her beak in it to hopefully get her started. I think syringing fluids into their mouth is very risky as water can easily end up going down the wind pipe if she struggles. Just offer her the sugar water and very sloppy feed..... no solid feed.... and keep massaging regularly. Did you get much up when you vomited her and did she cooperate. The initial idea of vomiting her is to make room in her crop so that the normal massage is more effective. You want to be palpitating it a bit like a stress ball, just firmly but gently kneading it and trying to break up the contents.