akitafriendakita
Chirping
- Jul 12, 2023
- 87
- 71
- 88
First off, I do not believe there is one surefire way to cure pendulous crop because it seems like it can be caused by a variety of issues, such as blockages, worms, genetics, etc. There may not just be one way to solve your issue and I would attempt multiple treatments if you're not sure what's going on.
I spent way too long researching and trying to figure out how to solve my hen's problem, she had been suffering from pendulous crop for nearly two months straight and had reoccurring sour crop due to how swollen it was. After knowing that I was coming up on my third sour crop issue and I needed to try something different, I switched up my treatment.
If you need to rapidly treat sour crop btw, I used monistat 2%. I fed her about an inch of monistat in the morning and at night for a week each time she had sour crop. Make sure you keep up treatment for about a week even if you think it's gone, yeast is very resilient and will rapidly grow again if too much is left behind to prosper in the crop.
Give it a shot if you feel like nothing else is working!
I spent way too long researching and trying to figure out how to solve my hen's problem, she had been suffering from pendulous crop for nearly two months straight and had reoccurring sour crop due to how swollen it was. After knowing that I was coming up on my third sour crop issue and I needed to try something different, I switched up my treatment.
- Let your hen eat with the other chickens, my hen would get depressed very easily when isolated [even briefly] and will start refusing food when bored. Letting her be a normal chicken was the only way I could get her to keep trying to put weight on, they seem to lose weight very rapidly once the crop is having issues which can get dangerous fast if they get too weak to move.
- I removed my hen's crop bra, against the advice of many chicken owners with the same issue. The issue was my hen's crop was so big that the bra wasn't really holding it at all, it would quickly slip under eventually once my hen moved around no matter how well I attempted to fit it. I decided it was doing nothing after seeing some veterinarians mention online that it was kind of useless, and carried some risks with the air sacs being so close to the crop. Another problem with crop bras is that my hen could not properly maintain her feathers and was just looking absolutely terrible/uncomfortable, she was also distracted by the bra a lot and wasted time picking at it rather than doing normal chicken stuff.
- I started massaging my hen's crop for 15-20 minutes every few hours, I noticed my hen was getting more food down if I massaged her so I thought doing it routinely would at least get her weight back up while I try to figure out other treatments. You can observe how well your hen is digesting by isolating her temporarily and checking how how big and how often she's pooping.
- During this massage process, really feel inside the crop as much as you can. My hen had a lot of grit resting on the bottom of her crop, I could feel little pebbles moving around towards the bottom when I massaged her. This is not a good sign, all that grit is supposed to be in the gizzard and not resting in the crop. Grit is useless in the crop.
- I would make an effort push larger objects in the crop (such as grit) into the gizzard, the gizzard is located directly behind the crop towards the bottom (which is why the bra is supposed to lift the crop up to drain into the gizzard.) You can feel a small hole towards the back of the crop, push large things towards that during the massage. I find that pushed the crop up in a swishing motion, and then applying pressure seemed to drain it the fastest.
- After repeating these intense massages for a little under a week, the little grit pile was finally gone and her crop started draining normally again.
- My hen's crop is still stretched out to some extent, so be wary of issues reoccurring now that the crop has been permanently damaged.
If you need to rapidly treat sour crop btw, I used monistat 2%. I fed her about an inch of monistat in the morning and at night for a week each time she had sour crop. Make sure you keep up treatment for about a week even if you think it's gone, yeast is very resilient and will rapidly grow again if too much is left behind to prosper in the crop.
Give it a shot if you feel like nothing else is working!
. Did some googling and found a tutorial on how to make a crop bra from the sticky gauze wrap stuff you wrap horses ankles in and that vets use when animals have IVs. To my amazement it seems to have worked really really well. It’s been two days, she hates it but hasn’t managed to get it off, nothing is slipping down under the bra, and she can move around just fine! She’s not able to pick at it either (other than maybe a little at her back, but she doesn’t really bother it). I’ve also been giving her monistat cream 2x a day. I know she’s not out of the woods but she seems to be getting better.
