Gaditanos and Sour Crop

The best treatment for sour crop is prevention. I have found that 90% of the cases of sour crop starts with the bird overeating and/or over drinking. It's not hard to do with an oversized crop. The larger the crop, the greater the chance of getting sour crop. The way I prevent it is to have food and water on hand for every Pouter at risk 24/7. The reason I say "high risk" is because the breeds with smaller crops at at low risk.

The problem mainly arises when the birds run out of food and/or water and when you do give them some, they gorge themselves on it, thus causing the crop to become to heavy to digest the material in the crop. If allowed to ferment in the crop for 3 days or so it will cause the crop to go "sour." It should never be allowed to get to this point. If the birds have food and water in front of them freely at all times, they should never gorge themselves but there are exceptions that's why it's good to have multiple sources of food and water in the loft.

For proper prevention you need to make sure all the birds have free access to food and water. There are many reasons a bird won't eat even if food and water is available but only in one location. One is aggression. You might have an aggressive bird guarding the food or water and that may keep a bird from eating and once he does get a chance he will gorge himself. That's why it's wise to have multiple feeding and watering stations in the loft.

Another cause of sour crop is Pigeon milk binding the crop. When the milk forms in the crop of a pouter it lines the crop and makes it heavy, that in combination with food and water will send many large cropped breeds over the edge. It's risky letting large cropped breeds raise their own or even sit long enough to form milk. If they make it past the milk stage, there's another danger and that's feeding the young. A bird may gorge itself to bring back food for it's young, thus causing the crop to bind. Personally, I always use fosters and never allow them to even sit on eggs more than a week for fear the milk will be formed in the crop. 

I have some pictures of crop bound birds but I can't find them right now. If I can find them I'll post them. But it's easy to spot a bird that's crop bound, but you need to be careful because sometimes when they mope they will go into a dark corner and you don't see them till it's to late.

I only have problems when the weather gets hot from June-September, that's when they drink a lot more water. 

I also never breed two birds together that have had to be treated. It might be superstition but I believe there's something to it genetically. I have some birds that never get it and some that are chronic. Maybe it's the way they hold their crop or it's physiological, I am not sure but I sure don't want to pass it on to future generations if I can avoid it. I would like to retire all chronic birds from the breeding loft but some of them are so nice, it's hard to do.

Response by Rene Kruter: I only feed whole grains and therefore I gave up on washing out the crop. My method is the old fashion one. I role the bird in a newspaper and place it, head up, in a PVC waste pipe of 90 mm. After 12 to 24 hours the crop is empty and the recovering as you describe can start with minimal feeding a few times a day.