Precious has always been fond of her food, so it wasn't unusual to see her with a bulging crop. In fact it got to a point where she would come running up to us with it swinging pendulously. At first I thought it was amusing, but then I saw a video of another hen with a swinging crop and the owner was asking what was wrong. It turned out to be a complication known as pendulous crop and wasn't a good sign.
Precious with her pendulous crop on display.
What Is Impacted, Sour or Pendulous Crop?
For those who don't know, many birds have crops. This is a pouch in front of their chest where food gets stored and softened before traveling on to their stomach. If too much food sits in there it can get compacted together causing an impacted crop and the bird struggles to move it on. An impacted crop can be sorted out if caught early by gentle massaging in order to break it up. It will feel like a hard clump or dough ball.
There are a variety of reasons why a chicken might get an impacted crop. Cramming to much in is one, as is a slow digestive system which backs up when they become over zealous with food. It can also come from a blockage of tangled fibre from long grasses or other long fibrous plants. This is why it's not recommended to let chickens run on long grass.
If food sits too long in the crop then they can get a fungal overgrowth like Candida which causes sour crop. A sour crop is usually expanded, feels mushy and sometimes bubbly. If you massage it quite often some of the air comes back out at it smells something like diarrhoea crossed with vomit. It's quite unpleasant!
Pendulous crop occurs when the crop has been impacted for so long that the crop muscles have been over-stretched. The chicken then struggles to tighten up the crop enough to move the food on to the stomach meaning that food ends up sitting at the bottom of the crop going bad, the chicken keeps cramming more food in because it's hungry and if left untreated it will die.
Treating Crop Problems
When I first realised what was wrong with Precious she was mostly still impacted. The initial treatment for both impacted and sour is the same. Withhold solid foods until the crop is emptied and gently massage to break it up and help move it on.
Reading up, most people recommended isolating the chicken with just water, but when I did this Precious started eating any bedding or newspaper I put down. So I kept her with the flock, which she was happier with anyway, because they are social animals. I removed her and put her on concrete when feeding the rest flock to stop her cramming any more in and massaged her crop about three times a day. Lifting it and pressing it into the hollow where the collar bone is seemed to be the most effective.
It took a few days, but the food did start moving through. Unfortunately, because her crop was so stretched it only moved through when I was massaging and just sat when I wasn't. Once it was clear and she was back to feeding with the flock, it went back to square one and this time she'd developed sour crop. As soon as I had a couple of busy days where I couldn't massage, her crop ballooned up with mush and foul smelling air and I had a very sick chicken on my hands.
My only option was to manually empty her crop, which wasn't something I wanted to do as there is a risk with this of them inhaling some of the contents. After a lot of research I eventually found a method that I felt offered the best advice. Tucking her firmly under one arm I tilted her forward so that her beak was pointing towards the ground and then firmly, but gently squeezed the crop until what was in it started to come back up. I did this for no more than 3 seconds then righted her. Judging by the smell of what came out it was certainly better out than in! I guess you could think of it like when we vomit (I know, ewwww!); it's never for more than a few seconds giving us pause to breathe before the next wave comes. If we carried on for longer then we would probably try to breathe and risk inhaling it. So it makes sense to give the chicken that same breathing break.
With Precious I did three lots of regurgitation, probably half emptying her crop, before she refused to keep her head pointing down and I took that as being enough. In the meantime I'd been working on making a crop bra to help support her crop. With the crop bra holding her crop up between massages recovery was much quicker this time.
Precious sporting her crop bra and looking more like a normal chicken should.
With sour crop, I needed to treat the fungal infection too. The recommended approach is to balance out the crop with good bacteria, so I took a multi pronged approach. I added apple cider vinegar to the flock's water and once her crop was empty I'd give Precious a separate feed with yoghurt, garlic and coconut oil. Garlic and coconut oil are supposed to be anti fungal and the yoghurt has the probiotic bacteria. Milk isn't something chickens have evolved to digest, so the yoghurt probably won't help gut flora, but my hope was that it might still have an affect in her crop.
Precious has to wear her crop bra permanently now, but it doesn't affect her quality of life. She even dustbathes in it so I have to empty it out occasionally. I can't rely entirely on the crop bra and still occasionally have to help move things on.
Making the Crop Bra.
Front of the crop bra.
Back of crop bra showing cross over elastics.Making the crop bra was trial and error. I tried it first with just a piece of fabric cut into a trapezium shape and connected the two cross over elastic straps. Unfortunately, this just slid off Precious' bulging crop. So I elasticated around the edges of the fabric to get it more cup shaped and it stayed in place better like that. The straps were a bit too long first try, but I got a good fit second try.
Showing the cross over elastic straps from the top.
The fabric goes over the crop at the front. The elastics reach over each shoulder, tuck behind the wing and back between the legs. I find it easiest to pop her head through the straps first, then tuck each wing in and pop each leg through.
