# very hard crop (?)



## Rockie (Jan 18, 2005)

I'm looking for some info for future use, as it is too late for a sweet pijie I rescued this past weekend.

When found, the pij was being attacked by 2 other pijies & she wasn't able to fly. She was very, very thin, not sure how old (I thought the beak looked young, but eyes were orange/red & she had all full grown feathers), & a very, very hard lump just below the beak/head to the left. I thought the crop was a little lower down & in the middle, so please correct me if I'm wrong.

I couldn't reach any rehabbers or vets. Since I'm the last person on earth who doesn't have a computer at home, I had a friend go on line for me and all the info that was found was that sometimes young birds get this hard crop when dehydrated. You could see she was desperately trying to eat, seeds were sticking to outside of her beak. When I looked inside mouth, I guess it might have been canker & it was large. 

After giving her time to destress, much later in the day, I gave her water w/pinch of salt & sugar. All I did was dribble it on the side of her beak & she drank it very readily on her own. She only got about 1 1/2 ml. When I came back an hour later to give her more, she was gone. Inside her mouth was a sunflower seed & a kernal of corn.

I now have 9 more pijies in my care, most w/PMV, & I'm meeting w/an avian vet on Wednesday to learn as much as I can, but everyone is always rushed. I know here on this site people are very knowledgeable about pigeons. Please tell me what was going on w/her & what should I have done. Thank you.


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## Reti (Jul 20, 2003)

Hi Leslie,

sorry for the loss of this sweet pigeon.
I cases like this one, which probably was canker, from your description, even medicines might not have helped. I found out the hard way that lumps of canker that size are most of the times fatal.
It is good to have a canker medication on hands (Flagyl, Spartrix or any other of the ...zoles). With this disease the treatment must start right away.
Ask the vet if he can give you some to have in the house. If not, you can order it online, from jedds/Foys or global.

Reti


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## Skyeking (Jan 17, 2003)

Hi Leslie,

Thank you for helping all these needy pigeons, you do have your hands full.

Sometimes we get pigeons that are so far gone, that anything we do is not enough, that is very hard to deal with but the comfort given those last moments of life is equally important.

When you get a very dehydrated and stressed bird please follow the guideline in the DAILY forum, under RESOURCES. There you will find Cindy's excellent thread on stabilizing a pigeon. These are crucial steps to follow first, because if the bird is not stabilized it cannot absorb the needed fluid into tissues, followed by needed nutrtion and fuel, supplied by food.

You are doing the right thing seeking out the help of a good "pigeon friendly" avian vet for these birds. Remember they can be rehabbed with PMV, it just takes longer.

Treesa


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## pdpbison (Mar 15, 2005)

Hi rockie,


The lump you describe was probably an abcess and not the Crop's contents.


Phil
Las Vegas


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## Rockie (Jan 18, 2005)

Thanks for the response & support. Anyone else w/comments as well would be very welcomed.


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## Feefo (Feb 8, 2002)

Hi Rocky, I echo what Reti said, sometimes the damage has gone too far for us to help.

I would usually check the mouth to see if there are any seeds that have got caught and could add to the blockage of the esophagus and trachea. I would remove these gently using a pair of tweezers.

If there appears to be a way though the canker to the crop I would hydrate using the International Hydrating Solution as you did, giving one drop at a time because you it is not possible to see how bad the blockage is or how much room there is in the crop. However, if possible I would like to see the pigeon have at least 5ml at a time, That is only a teaspoon full.

Otherwise I would inject Hartmann's Fluids (I think that you call it lactated ringers) sub cutaneolsly. THis can keep a pigeon alive for a couple of days which would give the canker time to shrink.

If there is a passage from the mouth to the crop I would give both Spartrix and Metronidazole for three days, and then continue with the Metronidazole for another seven days. Otherwise I would consider injecting Metronidazole into the crop (I have never had to do that!)

Depending on how advanced the canker is I would feed with something like Critical Care Formula or Poly Plus (a product designed to keep sick birds from starving) or Kaytee Exact. I have had to feed a pigeon with canker one drop at a time, waiting for each drop to work its way round the canker. 

It is possible to tube feed pigeons with canker by sliding a needle tube through whatever gap you can find, but there is a horrible risk attached to that as the needle could disturb a canker nodule and cause a fatal bleed. this is why I take the slowest and safets methods to feed them.

Good luck with your PMV rescues. 

Cynthia


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## Rockie (Jan 18, 2005)

"The lump you describe was probably an abcess and not the Crop's contents."


So do you think that she just couldn't get the food passed the abcess to the crop. She was desperately trying to eat the pigeon mix. I'm so sad about this, it was horrible to see her wanting the food, going for it, but evidently she couldn't get it down. Should I have tried small seed like finch or millet until I got her to the vet? Also, if I let her drink the water from the side of her beak, as she swallowed it on her own, would it definitely go down the right pipe?


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## Rockie (Jan 18, 2005)

cyro51 said:


> If there appears to be a way though the canker to the crop I would hydrate using the International Hydrating Solution as you did, giving one drop at a time because you it is not possible to see how bad the blockage is or how much room there is in the crop. However, if possible I would like to see the pigeon have at least 5ml at a time, That is only a teaspoon full.
> 
> 
> Cynthia


Thank you Cynthia. When you talk about one drop at a time, do you mean via a syringe? That's the only way I currently hand feed at this time. When I meet w/the vet I'm going to see if she can teach me to tube feed when necessary. I wish I could have given her another couple of days until I got to the vet.


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## pdpbison (Mar 15, 2005)

Hi Leslie,


Oh, sorry I was so brief in my above mention!


My own limited experience so far has shown...that...

Some abcesses can also involve ajacent organs or tissues and include them in a way. Where they meet can be frail and rupture easily. The infection forming the abcess is not necessarily Canker, while Canker may also be present as an accompanying consideration.

The abcess can consume contiguous organs or tissues in such a way as to effectively eliminate them or eliminate important parts of them. 

Your Bird may no longer have had an intact enough esophagus for any food or liquids to pass through, or may no longer have had enough of a Crop for the food to go into if it could pass through the esophagus, or, some food or liquid may have been getting swallowed to some degree, only to pass out of the esophagus if it was perforated or torn where it meets the abcess, where the food or liquid would then merely go into the area of under the skin of their Crop.

From what I have seen so far, the presence of a firm or odd 'lump' up high, even if it softens up from the Bird drinking, should be looked at very carefully for the possibility that it is not at all representing the dehydrated contents of their Crop, but instead, represents an infected abcess which should be investigated.

From my experiences so far, if I ever find one of these again, I will see about surgery to open up the front of the Bird and visually inspect the situation as it may involve their trachea and esophagus and or crop proper, and, for the abcess to be removed or cleaned out or as seems fitting for the situation.

If this inspection is not done, it will be very hard to guess merely if the esophagus is perforated or torn where it meets the abcess, or if other serious problems are there needing address or remediation when possible to do.

Recently, we had a responder whose Bird had suffered an abcess, which the Vet merely squeezed out through the Bird's mouth. While cared for very well and dutifully and tenderly, the Bird perished some days later.

This 'squeezeing out through the mouth' of an abcess located in their crop area, does not seem a good regimen to me, since it does not allow any inspection of the important parts the abcess was ajacent to, in order to tell what condition they are in.

I think we should regard any occasion of a firm lump up 'high' as being a probable abcess and should take it very seriously.

This type of surgery, can certainly be done without putting the Bird 'under', and or could be done with local anaesthetics.

Anyway, I had a wonderful little Dove brought to me who had such a lump up high-ish, as if they'd swallowed an Acorn or something, which I took to be a hard-Crop from dehydration, full of I imagined, 'Grass Seeds' or some fine textured wild Seeds of some kind. Only, it was really too high for being Crop contents that got firm.

Anyway, even though it softened up from the Bird drinking, the situation was merely that the contents of the abcess was getting softened from hydration. The Bird had a huge appetite, but hardly pooped much at all...where in fact, almost nothing was able to get through from the scar tissue of her esophagus and also that it was leaking badly internally, next to the abcess.

Her Crop began leaking externally also, and when I went to the Vet, he found the lump was about to come off with all the skin and so on with it, and so he wiggled it gently and off it came leaving a huge hole there on her front which allowed us to see very well her esophagus and trachea and the not much that remained of her Crop.

Her esophagus was ruined and blocked with scarring, and was perforated badly above the scared area, and no Crop to speak of remained. All of this could have been sutured well enough and likely healed decently, but with no crop, and a blocked esophagus, her future was precluded.

If caught early enough maybe, this would not have been the fatality it was.

That is my experience in these matters so far.


Good luck with your Birds Leslie...!


Find a good Avian Vet if you can, for when you may need them...


Phil
Laa Vegas


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## Rockie (Jan 18, 2005)

pdpbison said:


> The Bird had a huge appetite, but hardly pooped much at all...where in fact, almost nothing was able to get through from the scar tissue of her esophagus and also that it was leaking badly internally, next to the abcess.
> 
> Phil
> Laa Vegas


Thanks for the details Phil. I have a feeling it was similiar to one of your scenarios. With this info, I'll be a little bit better knowledgable when I speak w/the vet I'm going to this Wednesday. 


Thank you all...I wish I could have saved her.


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