Navi the hen has slipped this mortal coil. She has been struggling with impacted crop probably since last August. She was fine over the winter, crop heavy, but behaviorally fine, but the heat of summer caused her crop to expand until she was laying down more than walking. It came to two choices, put her down or try crop surgery. Turns out it wasn’t either/or. My eldest and I performed the crop surgery as described in Gail Damerow’s “Chicken Health Handbook”. We worked for 30 minutes before we couldn’t take the smell anymore and I couldn’t get anymore of the impacted material out. We cleaned her up and put her in the isolation ward. At first she seemed much better and was alert and more active. As time progressed, however, she was laying down again. Her crop was still full of matter, about the size of a billiard ball (this after we cleaned at least that much out). We made the decision to end her suffering. I followed Gail Damerow’s advice again this time from the book “Raising Chickens” and used the “suitable time-honored method” of dislocating her neck. It was not easy for me, but it was easy for Navi. I attempted a necropsy, enough to see that her crop was indeed still completely impacted with decaying grass and she would not have improved. My eldest joined me for the necropsy, and we even used masks infused with peppermint oil to mask the scent. It didn’t. I could not bring myself to do a complete autopsy. She was nothing but skin and bones and had been starving for a very long time. We built her a funeral pyre in the fire pit. We even added some twig boats to speed her journey. My youngest decided we needed a eulogy, so we shared some nice things about Navi the chicken, and my youngest is also working on gravestone designs. It is going to take me awhile to stop counting to 12.