Bird not eating with very full crop

Unfortunately Chestnut has died. I did open her crop and it was full mainly of lots of smooth undigested food (looking like my ground pellets), as well as fluid, a few leaves, a small feather, some short pieces of grass, and an undigested grain of wheat. I notice her skin is very dark in places, especially her lower belly, and I'm shocked to see how few feathers a brown hybrid has, although she has recently moulted. Does it sound as though what she has eaten has killed her?

She looked perky until yesterday morning, but I should have been monitoring her much more closely.
 
Hi Chickenfan.
Sorry to hear about Chestnut. I can't offer any diagnosis, only my sympathy...
 
Thank you Icemaiden. That's appreciated. It leaves me confused as to what I would do if it happened again as I think Chestnut suffered a lot whilst I was waiting to see if she could perform a similar miracle to Grace, and I should have had the strength to dispatch her. I don't think I would have another brown hybrid as their feathering is designed for indoor living and I live in a cold spot.
 
Forgot to say that obviously I only opened her crop when she was dead.
 
Always a very hard decision, Chickenfan, isn't it? We so want to be able to help, but with chickens it's often difficult to diagnose a problem as many things, like this crop blockage, can actually be symptoms of something else internal, such as a growth or infection. I'm sorry she didn't pull through, after all you put into caring for her. Chickens aren't very long lived, and as I think you came to realise, it's often kindest not to try too hard to prolong their life.
 
Thanks Marigold. I've now spoken to British Hen Welfare Trust Vet. She says it is extremely common for hybrids to get tumours and for their stomach to fill with fluid so the crop doesn't empty. She sees it all the time and is 90% sure this is what happened. Chestnut was really heavy but had a thin keelbone.
 
Yes I've had this sort of thing with a hybrid - vet said spongy feeling to the abdomen was a symptom of some internal disorder., thogh I don't think her crop was blocked. After that experience, and what your vet has said, I would now cull a hybrid who showed similar symptoms. As it is incurable, the kindest thing is to PTS rather than to hang on in the hope of a cure that isn't going to happen.i would do the same with prolapse problems.
 
I agree, Marigold re hybrids and no point trying to get them better if they are so prone to tumours. Sad we need to have bred such hens in order to make a profit.
 
I think part of the problem lies in the fact that avian physiology is very different from mammalian, so it's harder to know what's actually going on. Also, birds don't respond well to anaesthetic or X-rays etc, and as a prey species they get very stressed when handled or operated on, so the treatment options are limited and usually expensive in relation to the cost of a new pullet, and to the fairly short lifespan of a chicken, compared to other companion animals. Many vets have a limited experience of treating poultry, and to be fair, there 's often not that much they can do to help. Even if a tumour or prolapse is diagnosed, operating is usually out of the question, so an experienced keeper who has a good idea of what has gone wrong just has a lighter wallet after the vet has confirmed their suspicions. Often, it would probably have been kinder to either cull the chicken quietly at home, or just to ask the vet for euthanasia.
But let's be a bit more cheerful - we give our hens a really good life, they live longer than they would if kept in commercial conditions, and even if they do eventually wear themselves out producing eggs, they are still a lot better off than most of their kind. On a poultry forum, understandably, we hear more about the sick chickens than about the many thousands who lead normal, healthy, uneventful lives and eventually die of old age or heart attacks or whatever. Its the quality of life that matters, rather than its length, I think.
 
Digestive impaction is a minefield. The symptom of crop bound or sour crop is often, in an older bird, not the root cause. In our case we have had three apparently crop bound Orpingtons all with different digestive blockages lower down which we managed (after a month) to clear. We had one earlier that we put down to a tumour, because she ran out of energy with no sign of any improved clearance. Prior to that we had two with total grass impactions. Their skin turned black around the crop and they were dying of rotten food poisoning, rather than lack of energy. That was down to my bad husbandry, releasing hungry hens onto fresh long grass (posted on this 16 months ago I think). These were all older hens over 3 ½ years.

Prolapse recovery depends on the age of the bird and the breed. Accidents do happen and a large broken egg can cause a prolapse. The only two we have treated (both successfully and caused by the aforementioned occurrence) were a Black Rock and a TNN -both less than a year old. The Blackrock lived another 18 months and continued to lay without interruption, so the success with that prolapse was a much to good luck as the vet's advice I think. The TNN was treated with that experience in mind and a bit more knowledge ('Elisa's Prolapse' I think was the thread). She is laying again now 18 months on, having never had any further problems.

So automatically culling either of these two conditions may in some cases be a mistake. I have seen an excellent X-ray of a chicken suffering from some kind of digestive impaction. It was apparent to me from that that there may well have been a gizzard impaction which looked like it was from oystershell grit. Needless to say the hen didn't survive and could have been PTS a lot earlier perhaps. Our last case would have benefited from an X-ray, but how you explain all that to a French vet and how much they would charge us I don't know? Common causes of impaction are cigarette ends and bits of plastic or metal I read, neither of which we have experienced. I suspect tumours are, as said, the primary cause in hybrids.
 
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