So it’s come to this…
It strains against her reddened skin as though wanting to burst right through it. The size of half a tennis ball, it nestles grotesquely just above her breast, impossible to ignore. I sit and watch her and her sister, worrying about my level of expertise, my ability to make informed choices, whether I have enough information to make that judgement. It’s all quite distressing.
So when did I become someone who worries to this degree about a pair of scruffy, curly-feathered, flightless, noisy proto-dinosaurs? Chicken-Little scritches around in the pen, happily muttering to herself and pecking at whatever mysteries she unearths; EliZ-zabeth, on the other hand, hunkers down into the hole she’s scratched out, her distended crop resting on the cool, bare soil.
This is one of those beware-the-internet situations and, by now, I should know better than to search for answers there. And yet…
And yet I go online anyway, typing ‘distended crop, chicken’ into the search bar. The results take me down a pathway no-one, least of all someone with a mild bird phobia, should trudge long, I’m soon knee deep in opinions, ‘cures’ and ‘solutions’, videos of people assisting their hens to regurgitate the contents of their crop – and so on.
For the-uninitiated, the crop is effectively a holding pen for food, located between the beak and the bottom of the oesophagas. Food generally lurks there overnight, before oozing down into the rest of the digestive tract, namely to the the stomach (aka the proventriculus and gizzard) and, finally, through the intestines and out the other end.
Information like that makes is useful and makes sense, but a fair chunk of what I trawl through seems to involve actually handling the chicken to check her crop. Right. Let’s be clear: I think birds – all sorts of birds – including poultry – are lovely and an essential part of the environment. But they’re not for handling – not by me, anyway. Our birds are happily housed in their run; I feed them, make sure they have water and that their nesting box is cleaned out every day. In return they lay the occasional egg, fertilise the fruit trees they amble around under and make just enough noise for me to worry the neighbours might complain. They never do.
What is NOT part of that deal is for me to handle the pecky little fluff balls.
So I send anxious messages to DaughterDearest, who has 30+ chickens, knows much about poultry of various sorts and lives on Chicken-Little and EliZ’s ancestral lands – ie. where they were hatched.
Me: “So. EliZ still has a very red and swollen crop… When does it go from ‘full’ to ‘sour’ to ‘impacted’? I’ve looked at a silly number of chicken sites, but feel none the wiser… only anxious I’ll have to fondle her crop to get answers!”
In my mind I can just see her roll her eyes and smile as she replies: “Impacted would be hard to the touch and warmer than normal. If you’re worried, just don’t feed them for a day or two and let it empty naturally. Or just give them milk, or yoghurt diluted in milk/water, but no grain. I doubt it’s bad stuff; mine literally never have problems.”
Adding this response to my extended doom-reading of backyard chicken sites, I decided that a crop fondle is inevitable. Thus, early next morning, Himself finds he’s been recruited to: 1) catch EliZ; 2) secure her so that I can (oh, the horror!) ‘fondle’ her crop to establish – with my oh-so-limited-knowledge – whether it’s hard/soft/lumpy/flaccid; and 3) return her to the run if no further action is necessary – OR – take said action whilst I watch from a chicken-free space.
Fortunately for all concerned, she was easy to catch and her crop wasn’t as swollen as it had been. Since I had her to hand (to GLOVED hand!), I did in fact palpate her crop gently to break up any residual mass before Himself popped her back into the run to join her anxious sibling. The process wasn’t as terrifying as I’d feared, although I steered well clear of her beak and she did give me the hairy-chicken-eyeball the whole time the fondling was underway. Fun times.
Chicken-Little didn’t think much the goings on and made her opinion known by grumbling to herself, her sister and anyone else within hearing range throughout the proceedings. She settled down once EliZ was safely back in the run and they had the milky yoghurt to console them. No grain or treats (veg scraps, etc) for 24 hours after that, to be on the safe side. Fortunately, by the following morning the crop-bulge was mostly flattened and EliZ looked much more comfortable. Crisis averted.
