If you’re used to your duck looking a certain way, and the bird suddenly has a change in appearance you’d be right to be concerned. A change in appearance usually means that there is something going on with the bird internally.
A major change that you should look out for is your duck’s chest becoming swollen. This article looks into why that happens.
Table of Contents
Duck’s chest is swollen:
Ducks are relatively resilient, these birds do get sick but this doesn’t happen as often as one would think.
According to duck anatomy, the crop of the duck is located at the bird’s chest.
The crop stores food that the bird eats and releases the food slowly into the bird’s stomach to allow for digestion to happen. If the bird’s chest is enlarged then this enlarging likely happened because something is going on with the bird’s crop
Your duck’s chest is meant to be flat, a sudden bulge in the bird’s chest can mean one of four things:
The duck has recently eaten:
Just as human stomachs expand when we eat, a ducks’ crop will expand when they eat too. A duck’s crop expanding after the bird eats is quite normal and the crop will expand depending on how much the duck eats.
If the bird overeats then the bird’s crop will look more expanded than normal and this may be worrying to you if you have not seen the crop expand this much before
What to do:
You don’t have to worry if you find that a bird’s crop starts to expand after the bird eats, this is perfectly normal. The crop should go down in size throughout the day and will have deflated by the time that the bird wakes up the next day.
Check the bird’s crop on the next day to make sure that it did indeed go down before the bird starts to eat again.
The bird has a slow crop:
Your bird’s crop may be deflating but if it deflates slower than normal then the bird may have what is called a slow crop.
A slow crop can develop in a variety of situations. The bird may have developed a slow crop if the bird is suffering from kidney disease, liver disease, or hardware disease.
These diseases cause a number of issues in the bird’s body including a slowing of the crop
What to do:
Compare how fast the crop deflates in your infected bird with the crop of the healthy birds of your flock.
Also compare the crops rate of deflation with how fast the crop used to go down, if you find that the crop is deflating slower than normal then the bird likely has a slow crop
Treating the slow crop in your bird involves treating the underlying health issue of your bird. You may need to take your bird to the vet to be diagnosed quickly and to receive treatment for its slow crop.
The bird has an impacted crop:
What your bird eats may also cause the bird’s crop to swell in size. Some foods shouldn’t be eaten by ducks but the birds will still eat these foods and doing this will cause issues.
Foods that your duck shouldn’t be eating, that cause an impacted crop, include plastics from the environment as well as log grasses. These items will bind with your birds feed in the crop and cause a blockage that can’t be pass on its own
If the bird eats more food while having an impacted crop then the food may or may not be able to pass past the blockage and thus won’t be digested by the bird.
What to do:
Start off by feeling the bird’s crop to see if there is indeed a mass in the crop. Keep the bird from eating and only allow it to drink water to see if the crop deflates throughout the day and overnight.
If the crop does not deflate then you’d need to give the bird about 10ml of olive oil to lubricate the bird’s crop and then massage the area for a few minutes to break the blockage up.
Massage the bird’s crop a couple of times a day.
If massaging the crop doesn’t work and the blockage doesn’t go down then you may have to take the bird to the vet to have the mass removed surgically.
The bird has a blocked crop:
This is similar to the bird having an impacted crop but happens when the bird eats a solid and hard object that the bird can’t pass
In this case, the object can’t be broken up by massaging. The large object will either be a large stone or another large object. Some food may still be able to pass down into the bird’s stomach bypassing the object but not all food will
What to do:
In this case, the bird would need to be taken to the vet to have the object surgically removed.
Check to see if there is a hard mass that can’t be massaged out of the bird’s crop before deciding to take the bird to the vet.
If you enjoyed this article then you may also be interested in other duck related articles. Here are some articles that you may be interested in: Duck Swollen Crop, Why Is My Duck Attacking Me?, Duck With Lump On Head, Introducing Geese To Chickens