# slow crop in chick - yeast?



## Dutch (May 24, 2018)

I have a chick that has had slow crop emptying for about a week now and managed to keep it going for the past five days with some baking soda crop massages and "Susan Russo" spice mixed in the hand rearing formula. The chick was rejected by it's parents and smelled awful when I got it with large red veins on the crop. This all got better but for the crop emptying still isn't very fast and some light veins are sometimes visible. Also she stands in her heated box, head upright. Not backwards.Is this a certain indication of crop yeast still being present? I dont feel any lumps or thickening of the crop wall. Could bacteria also cause her to stay standing upright?
Personally I find the baking soda/pepper/citric juice recipe from Susan Russo way to strong/ alkaline. So yesterday I gave her some antifungal medicine/ Amphoceterin b that I have left from treating another bird and she seems to respond well to it. Also I stopped the baking soda treatment. Not sure whether I should continue the crop massages with baking soda though... It may be beneficial against bacteria. 
All advice is welcome, but going to an experienced vet is not so easy, since I would need to travel for quite a bit...
Oh one more thing: if you continue mixing in a pinch of yoghurt in the food mixture, without giving baking soda, do you risk making the birds stomach too acidic? I think not, but would like to be sure.


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## Dutch (May 24, 2018)

I want to try Echinae for the little bird. Does anyone know how to calculate a normal dose for birds based on a human dosage of 7 tablets/day or 90 drops/day? the tiny bird weighs only 35g, that is 1/2000 of the human body weight. 
I did find this though: 


> Echinacea can be found in health food stores in tablet and capsule form. Toxicity studies in animals indicate that Echinacea is non toxic. Dr Harrison mixes 3 ml of echinacea extract with 7 ml of lactulose, a non-prescription product from pharmacies. He administers one drop twice daily to a budgie-size bird. The recommended dose of echinacea for a parrot is 2.5 drops per kg of body weight, or 5 drops per cup of drinking water. It is thought that echinacea should be administered for only two weeks in succession, followed by two weeks off the herb. Echinacea alone should not be used to treat a critically ill bird that needs aggressive antibiotic treatment


http://www.birdsnways.com/wisdom/ww24eii.htm

and


> Echinacea is probably the single best herb for life-threatening infections such as blood poisoning (septicemia). It stimulates immunity so effectively that the body mounts a full-blown assault on any existing infections in a way that no medicine could replicate. Many experienced herbalists use echinacea as the herb of choice with infections such as blood poisoning or MRSA where the patient could die quickly and where conventional antibiotics are often of no use. Birds frequently find themselves at the point of no return with septicemia and echinacea is one of the only effective ways to treat this frequently fatal infection. Doses must be massive and frequent: a one pound bird might require six or seven drops of echinacea tincture every one to two hours for 24 hours, at which point the dose can be tapered off to once every three or four hours for another two days, and finally the dose can be reduced to five times per day for an additional week to ten days. I always keep echinacea (root) tincture on hand in case of this type of emergency. You can buy echinacea tincture in glycerin, but it does not work nearly as well as the alcohol based tincture. If a bird's life were in danger I would use the alcohol tincture until the situation were under control - then the glycerite could take over for the remainder of the treatment. For smaller birds like budgies and finches, I would use two to three drops per dose.


http://www.essentialbird.com/herbal-first-aid.html


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## roxy culver (May 27, 2010)

I don't anything about these things or how to calculate them. If the baby doesn't have an infection you'll be killing off all the good bacteria. Have you tried applesauce in the baby food instead? And are you continuing the spice mix?


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## Dutch (May 24, 2018)

roxy culver said:


> I don't anything about these things or how to calculate them. If the baby doesn't have an infection you'll be killing off all the good bacteria. Have you tried applesauce in the baby food instead? And are you continuing the spice mix?


Yes, I tried apple sauce, but it had a not so good effect, unfortunately. It was regular apple sauce though, not baby apple sauce.
I have given the spice mix for a week now, and read that is about max. I tried continuing in a lower dose of spice, but as soon as I scale down on the spice, the smell of the poo goes up. Maybe I should just take the chance and increase the dose of spice again and add some cayenne pepper as well...?
I also sent some poo to the lab to see whether it really has a bacterial problem. Hope they can still analyze it after all the extra's I fed the little tiel. earl:


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## roxy culver (May 27, 2010)

I've never heard that you can only feed the spice mix for a week. When breeding I fed it the whole season. It's good for the immune system.


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## Dutch (May 24, 2018)

roxy culver said:


> I've never heard that you can only feed the spice mix for a week. When breeding I fed it the whole season. It's good for the immune system.


Thanks, that is good news!


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## Dutch (May 24, 2018)

The combination of spice, amphoceterin (fungizone) and occasionally some alka selzer managed the crop yeast to decrease a lot. That doesn't seem to bother him anymore. But... The chick is underweight and digestion remains slow. It responds very well to a bit of Alka Selzer in the morning and evening, combined with a crop massage. How much of Alka Selzer can I give it? I was thinking of an extra afternoon/ lunch dose.... Now it receives 2-3 cc per day, diluted as recommended by SRTiel. Can I try a 4-6 cc dose of 1.4mg/ml Alka Selzer?


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## roxy culver (May 27, 2010)

I'd consult with a vet. I wouldn't give any more than what srtiels had recommended.


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## Mhoshi (Jul 4, 2018)

The baby is standing upright because its too hot. 94 is ok for newer babies. 84 is best around 3 weeks or older. Look up proper temps by age.


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