sour crop

[Anonymous]

Hi, one of my hens has sour crop, we have emptied her crop by making her sick and obviuosly need to keep doing so until completely clea. However trying to get some probiotic yogurt in her is proving very difficult. We have brought her in as the weather is so cold and she was shivering. Not too sure we will save her but trying.

Ther symptoms appeared on the fifth day of flubenvet treatment. Has any one else has this or is this just a coincident?

Sparrow

 

[chrismahon]

You are taking a big risk emptying the crop Sparrow. She could easily choke or inhale the stuff and that's it. Never had anything like that, are you certain it is sour crop - does her breath smell?

We administer probiotic yoghurt by syringe, allowing her to take it down in stages. But first we used epsom salts mixed as instructed then 5ml. This cleans out the system completely which then is restarted with probiotic yoghurt. Incidentally same effect that Baytril has, according to the vet we spoke to today, after which you should also administer 5ml P.Y.

 

[Sue]

Gently massaging her crop is much safer than trying to empty it as you could suffocate her if any of it goes into her lungs! I used the massage method very succesfully on my sussex. I did this every couple of hours and it was much better the following day and cleared completely in a couple of days.

 

[chrismahon]

Need to add Sparrow that Epsom Salts is considered a 'crank' medicinal practice -like WD40 on leg mite. But it has worked twice for us. The 5ml is just a teaspoon of the resulting Epson Salts solution mixed in a glass -remainder goes down the sink. There is no second dose. The probiotic yoghurt is given 24 hours later.

 

[Anonymous]

Hi, I agree that trying to emply the crop is a bit risky, however we went very carefully and made sure it was done in stages and she has also by the looks of it passed a lot of very nasty smelly stuff through her over night. And yes her breath was very smelly. She is much lively this morning and drinking well, clucking and generlly looking more like a hen. Going to introduce some food with yogurt today. Never heard of epsom salts being used, but you learn something new every day.

Just going to see how it goes now , thanks everyone, by the way has anyone had this problem after usisng flubenvet?

sparrow

 

[chrismahon]

Well it was definately sour crop Sparrow, as you said. We've never had a case of sour crop during worming. Has she been eating the other birds poo in preference to the Flubenvet feed I wonder? I have seen this happen with some of ours, but since we switched to Marriages Flubenvet premix it has stopped, because they guzzle it down preferring it to their untreated Smallholder layers pellets.