My chicken needs a bra (update on my hen) (1 Viewer)

Wingfrost · 23 April 2023

I’m too lazy to explain what all happened before so just look at this past thread of mine if you want to be caught up to speed.

So on Tuesday we took Velvet (one of my hens) to urgent care, which was a 2 hour drive there and back, we have another chicken veterinarian who’s closer but she was on vacation at the time and every other place didn’t have room for another patient.

Anyways, back to Velvet. Basically what she has is something called Crop Stasis, its where things just aren’t getting properly digested or they digest at a slower rate. It’s also infected which can be fatal if left untreated.
Velvet’s crop was actually filled with water, the veterinarian attempted to drain it but during the procedure Velvet’s breathing got really labored and they couldn’t continue on.

However, we can treat her.
Velvet is currently hanging out with us inside, she gets three shots and one pill a day, she’s almost done with one set of shots and has 6 more days with the other as well as the pill. She does amazing with all of it (honestly with every experience of giving our chickens medicine and whatnot it’s been incredibly easy). She falls asleep while we give her the shots and as long as I hide the pill in a piece of watermelon she eats it right up. The bad thing about the meds is that she can’t be with the flock for two months after her last dose because she lays the same egg color as most of the other girls and her eggs can’t be eaten after two months of the meds. We’ll be setting her up in the quarantine section of their run once she’s done with her medication so she can be around them though.

Now about the bra. Her crop is so swollen that it’s about the size and weight of a large water balloon and it’s obviously painful for her so the solution is a chicken bra! Yes these are actual things for chickens to my surprise.

We’re hoping her crop goes down with the help of medications and the bra combo. But if it doesn’t she may need it for the rest of her life as well as some crop massages here and there. She might be our first chicken with special needs.
This unfortunately doesn’t mean we’re 100% out of the woods yet but, Velvet has a lot of life left in her and as everyone at the vet hospital told us is “too spunky to euthanize” (apparently she ran away from them when they opened her crate and gave them lots of trouble ). So we want to give her a chance. She and the other young chickens of the flock actually turned a year old today.

Anyways, I’ll most likely post pictures of her in her bra once we get it in the mail so anticipate more chicken content.