Chicken Health | IMPACTED CROP

Does My Chicken Have an Impacted Crop?

An impacted crop is when your chicken's crop, or stomach, becomes filled with a mass they cannot digest. The crop can be filled with hay or straw, baling twine, rocks, wood chips, basically anything the hen eats that cannot pass through her digestive system.

What Is a Crop?

The crop is a pouch at the end of the oesophagus that carries out the initial stages of digestion. This can become blocked causing a build-up of food inside. The crop will empty at night, but if a chicken has an impacted crop then it will not empty.

A vet surgically removing this organic matter from this chickens crop.

Symptoms

A hard, larger than normal bulge in the crop area of the neck. A crop bounded chicken will not want to eat or drink, will not defecate or will have runny droppings, and they will generally appear droopy and under the weather. If left untreated the chicken will lose weight. It is easy to diagnose as a chicken with a blocked crop will have a full crop in the morning before it has eaten.

Treatment

An impacted crop is usually caused by a large fibrous ball of material like straw or grass that stops the food from passing through. In mild cases of an impacted crop you can encourage your chicken to drink warm water or vegetable oil and massage the crop to loosen what's inside and hopefully that will clear the blockage. If that doesn’t work and the crop feels quite hard and compacted, then it is best to take your chicken to the vet. The vet will cut open the crop and empty it under a local anaesthetic. To prevent a blocked crop, try to keep the grass your chickens are grazing on short and best not to feed your chickens grass clippings.