More thoughts on compacted crop

[chookmike]

Our hen is as right as rain today and back with the gang in the house with ACV water and dry pellets only - there is nothing else to eat as the whole run looks like the moon.

We had her isolated and living the life of Reilly on canned fish with olive oil, tomato juice etc and 4 massages a day etc.

It then occurred to me that I should not have 'diagnosed' compacted crop as I had never seen it before and had nothing to compare it to.

So, up the top and caught the other four with very variable findings: one had a crop just as hard and full as Speckly, two had no discernible contents other than shell or grit, and one had a 'half-full' feel. The test was done at 4pm after the usual day of dry pellets and water available ad-lib.

Speckly was indeed unwell at the start of this - but why is the bird with the similar crop not unwell? And why do some have nothing in them? The two empty girls are the plucker and the plucked, if I can put it like that - one digesting quickly because she is desperate for nutrition hence plucking, and the other desperate for nutrition due to trying to grow new feathers?

Any ideas?

Cheers

[AnnieG]

No idea Chookmike but I often have one girl with a full crop while the other two have empty ones. I think the full crop one is just a bit greedy, she is twice the size of the other two and there is always plenty of food to go round. They free range so maybe it's something my girl likes to eat from the garden that the other two are not fussed about. I do panic a bit when I see the lumpy chest but it does go down on it's own, or at least it has so far

[Chicken drumstick]

Hi Mike

I,ve been crop feeling tonight on all nine hens ...

Basically the two bullied x bats don't seem to eat until i let the others free range and they feel safe .
Any way , both x bats it felt like nothing in the crop but 2 hours later both were fuller and felt like rock hard boiled eggs .....just ate pellets .

The other 7 who could eat from 7 am , some had softer crops but some also rock hard and 2 were also lop sided .

Perhaps they all vary i don't know

[chookmike]

Thanks for that both.

It would be interesting to hear more stories about variations in crop 'fullness' If we all did it at the end of the afternoon before any evening feed with treats then we might get a better picture. I eat like a horse and struggle to keep 10 stone so perhaps they have the same variation in metabolic rate - the two empty crop ones are far and away the most active.

She was off-colour and is well now so that's the good news - maybe she had a softie which would have disappeared in seconds, but I have only seen this once and the hen simply froze, standing tall.

Keeping frogs seems much easier.

Cheers all

[manda]

You need to feel the crops of individuals at all different times of the day Mike....a bird with a very full crop at the end of a day isn't a problem unless it's still full at the beginning of the day....the reason I would suspect the Speckly felt unwell was because the crop just wasn't emptying and the other hen's is...not a complicated reason but sometimes they're not.

So you need to feel their crops at different times....

For the one that has an empty crop I would keep an eye is it consistently empty?...Have the chooks been wormed recently? It could be (not saying it is) that this one has a greater worm burden...keep an eye on her weight. If they haven't been wormed recently then you could do that.

Not saying there is a problem but that is the sort of thing you want to be watching for because it's things like this with crops that you want to watch out for

[AnnieG]

Manda. I need to worm mine but they are ex barn/cage and only 21/22 weeks old. Would they have been done already and if so how long should I leave it before doing them again?

[Mo]

Keeping frogs seems much easier.

Have you ever kept frogs?

[chookmike]

No, Mo, only joking as our pond is full of them this year with tons of spawn but we don't 'keep' them. I moved many hundreds of tadpoles to local ponds last year but there will be even more this time which is great news.

Perhaps you meant 'exotics'

Have a great weekend

Mike

[Mo]

It just painted an interesting picture.

I used to have a jar of tadpoles + pond water, when the children were small. And at Playgroup until one year when a party in the hall at the weekend topped up their water with beer.

[Skeksis]

Don't forget if you are moving them, you need to move the spawn not the tadpoles as if you move those, they will come back to breed in your pond and possibly get killed on the way x

[manda]

Manda. I need to worm mine but they are ex barn/cage and only 21/22 weeks old. Would they have been done already and if so how long should I leave it before doing them again?

Can't guarantee they were and I've seen ex-batty's riddled with worms so it won't hurt to worm them again.

[chookmike]

Good news as Speckly remains fine - 10/10

As this thread pleasingly veered off into tadpoles and beer she is now to be known as Old Speckled Hen, which was a beer brewed in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, by Morlands, (or was it Morrels) now swallowed up by Greene King, I think. Old Speckled Hen was a unique MG racing car and named owing to its paint job - Abingdon being the home of MG - or Morris Garages.

I have owned a dozen or so MG's but refuse to tell you how many pints of OSH have passed my way - at 5% it is a bit dangerous nowadays and I'm not allowed beer any more in any case.

OSH is available in most supermarkets in a bottle and makes a very good beef and ale casserole.

Cheers 'n' cheers