Natural Treatments for Sour Crop

Sour Crop, or Candidiasis, is caused by an overgrowth of Candida albicans. Simply put, it is a yeast infection inside the bird’s crop. It causes the mucus membranes within the crop to swell giving the bird the appearance of having something the size of an apple lodged in its neck. This overgrowth of yeast can also create lesions in the crop, esophagus and mouth. 

In a true case of sour crop, the swollen area will feel squishy and a bad smell can be detected from the beak when pressure is applied to the crop. If the crop is hard, it may be an impacted crop and not sour crop, so please be sure to inspect the crop area thoroughly before treating.

What our contributors have to say about treating a true case of sour crop:

Vicki Says:

• Withhold water for the first 12 hours
• Withhold food for 24 hours
• After the first 12 hours, give only clear, clean water with no additives
• At this point I release the bird but I continue observation

If the crop does not empty after the first 24 hours:

• I give the bird only clean water and try to get the crop empty to start treatment
•  Do not feed the bird any solid food at all until the crop is empty. If it is not empty there is a reason. Adding more volume (food) is not going to help
• Use a dropper to give olive or coconut oil
• Massage the crop

 

If the crop swells up again

• Confine the bird to the coop
• I again withhold water for 12 hours and food for 24 hours - you need that crop emptied for treatment to work.
• I massage the crop if it feels hard and impacted. If it is squishy I do a little massaging to get things moving.

 After the crop empties:

• I feed them eggs with a tablespoon of plainyogurt. I just smash the whole egg… shells and all - and stir in the yogurt.
•  I observe for the next 24 hours.
• They are offered plain fresh water at all times.
• After 24 hours, if the crop has emptied, I add plain grain to the eggs.
• I observe for another 24 hours.

I do not do much messing with sour crop. Sometimes they get something lodged in there that needs time to get out. I can usually feel it from the outside and massage it out.

If you are sure it is sour crop, there are many things that can be done to treat this kind of thrush naturally. The key to curing thrush naturally and permanently is to kill the yeast with natural means and also to cure the underlying deficiency or imbalance that allowed the yeast to grow out of control in the first place. You treat all you want, but if the bird is to get better it is imperative to find the core of the issue.

I offer Oregano, tea tree oil, lavender, and a few cloves to all my birds regularly.  Usually this time of year birds develop sour crop from over eating all the lush greens they didn’t have over the winter. I have two that are pooping pure green from the wild strawberries and blossoms. They come in at night and look like they are going to blow up. (They look normal by morning, so I know it’s not a thrush issue.)

I have culled one bird for a chronic crop problem. She just loved to eat the oddest things. I had cut up old pie tins and put them in my garden to deter birds and bunnies, and she loved to eat them. Loved shiny things. Found all my husband’s lost nails, nuts and bolts. She was very odd. If she came across a nail head in a door jam or window, she would spend hours trying to get it out.

 A normal, healthy crop.

Justine Says:

Here is what has worked for me –

Cut out all ACV

Give yoghurt with probiotics

Eggs are also good

No sugar at all - so no fruits, breads, etc. 

Massage crop

When I first noticed that my hen Ruby had Sour Crop, she was bending over to eat and regurgitating. That stuff STANK. Like spoiled milk. Her crop was huge. I took her off food and offered her only water while I did some research. I then bought some plain, sugar free, yoghurt and offered it to her with eggs. She gobbled it up. I massaged her crop twice a day and continued to offer her yoghurt in addition to their regular feed for a week. No treats. She was better after a few days and back to normal after a week.

aaggig Says:

The one thing that I found after searching the internet was Red Wine... You MUST withhold food or grain based food - as Justine says it’s a yeast infection and sugars feed yeast.  Give the chicken a dropper full of Red Wine and wait. Massage the crop in a downward motion. Check the chicken later and if it is not gone give them more Red wine and some plain, organic yogurt. The chicken should be cured in 12-24 hours.

Another chicken owner had the same problem and I told her about the wine. At first she was skeptical but emailed the next day say it was a miracle!  So that’s my 2 cents....

*Please note – Be cautious when administering liquids and oils by syringe or dropper as you do not want your bird to aspirate the liquid into the lungs. Here is a great video on giving chickens medication:

*

Diary of a Sick Chicken and a Necropsy - Graphic!

Part of flock management is knowing your birds well enough to know when something is wrong. This week, one of my Lavender Orpington pullets (of about 22 weeks of age) became lethargic. She was not staying with the flock and she had a hunched up appearance.

Note how her neck was hunched back into her body.

One can see a difference in her posture in this photo taken prior to her becoming ill.

I brought her in and put her in a dog crate. Over a period of hours I could see that she that her stool was mostly urate - liquid with lots of white stuff - and there was very little solid matter at all. 

I felt about and her crop did not seem to be impacted. It felt the way it was supposed to feel, for the most part. I believed the issue could be an impacted or blocked gizzard.

I gave her warm olive oil mixed with yogurt, electrolytes, garlic and oregano orally with a syringe and soaked her in a warm bath to see if that would get things moving. She loved her warm bath (and a massage of the gizzard area) - and it seemed to help. There was more solid matter in her stools... for a little while.

Then everything stopped moving again. I did more oral treatments and another soak, but this time it didn't work. I could tell she was failing quickly, so I put the poor girl out of her misery.

I feel it is important to do what one can to find out the cause of an illness and why a bird in one's flock dies. If there is an illness or a parasite problem, it is important to find out so that one may protect or treat the rest of the flock to prevent further deaths.

I performed a necropsy on this bird. The following images are very graphic and meant for educational purposes. If you have a weak stomach,  
please stop reading now.

You have been warned...



OK - very first thing - we can see how thin this bird was. With all her winter fluff, it was not possible to see just how much weight she had lost, but I could feel it when I picked her up.

Secondly, look at her keel bone. This bone is supposed to be straight... not only is this pullet's keel bone not straight, but it is very, very crooked! So much so that had she not died at this early age, I feel this defect would have impacted the rest of her life negatively. (Legs are at the top of the photo, and neck at the bottom.)

We can also see the presence of material in her crop. Here is a diagram to reference as we go:

Upon opening her, it was instantly evident that something was blocked!

That giant, bulbous thing is her pancreas. Not a good thing to see! Digging further, I could see she was backed up at the point were her pancreas funneled into the small intestine. The blockage caused everything above it to become engorged.

Her gizzard was engorged, as was her proventriculus. The dark maroon mass is her liver.

And now the cause...

 This is the lower end of her pancreas. This piece that I cut off is where the problem was. Lumpy, tough growths that were blocking the flow of all but liquid matter.

So to illustrate the issue, I placed her internal organs in order from the neck (on the left) to the cloacia or vent, on the right. You can see that everything above the blockage is engorged, and everything below it is not.

A "flow chart," so to speak, indicating the direction food moves through the chicken.

While in many cases an impacted crop or gizzard can be corrected, in this case there was no way to save this particular chicken. She apparently was not put together very well to begin with, and would likely have died no matter what.

On the flip side, it is good to know that it was not something she ate that my other chickens might have gotten into also, and it was not a disease.