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Life of a chicken owner 
Yesterday we gave our flock grass clippings and this morning as I was letting them out I noticed one of our hens (Velvets’) crop was extremely impacted (basically where the food becomes compacted in the crop and creates a blockage). It can happen by the chicken eating too much long grass, string or plastic. We’ve always given them clippings with zero problems but I guess Velvet wanted to keep our life interesting.
We’ve separated her from the rest of the flock with zero food (only for 24 hrs), which unfortunately has to be in a dog kennel because the chicken quarantine area has grass in it so that option was a no no. She’s been given a few nice crop massages to help break it up and it seems to be slowly working, it should get completely digested throughout the night, fingers crossed (in extreme cases it can be fatal but I think she should be fine). My only worry is she hasn’t pooped yet, chickens poop quite a lot and it’s not a good sign for them to go too long without going, but we think once everything is digested that that problem will be fixed as well.
Also she gave us lots of trouble when trying to catch her to put her in the crate, close to an hour. She kept going underneath bushes, then a few of the other hens were being nosy and kept getting in the way. I also had to lure the boys into the coop because they’d full on attack me if I tried chasing one of their hens and I prefer to not be tackled and pecked to death by two 7 pound roosters.
I shall keep you all updated on lovely Velvet.
Yesterday we gave our flock grass clippings and this morning as I was letting them out I noticed one of our hens (Velvets’) crop was extremely impacted (basically where the food becomes compacted in the crop and creates a blockage). It can happen by the chicken eating too much long grass, string or plastic. We’ve always given them clippings with zero problems but I guess Velvet wanted to keep our life interesting.
We’ve separated her from the rest of the flock with zero food (only for 24 hrs), which unfortunately has to be in a dog kennel because the chicken quarantine area has grass in it
so that option was a no no. She’s been given a few nice crop massages to help break it up and it seems to be slowly working, it should get completely digested throughout the night, fingers crossed (in extreme cases it can be fatal but I think she should be fine). My only worry is she hasn’t pooped yet, chickens poop quite a lot and it’s not a good sign for them to go too long without going, but we think once everything is digested that that problem will be fixed as well.Also she gave us lots of trouble when trying to catch her to put her in the crate, close to an hour
. She kept going underneath bushes, then a few of the other hens were being nosy and kept getting in the way. I also had to lure the boys into the coop because they’d full on attack me if I tried chasing one of their hens and I prefer to not be tackled and pecked to death by two 7 pound roosters.I shall keep you all updated on lovely Velvet.
