It was a fast attack, and it was over in less than a minute, but Lucy pulled out almost half of her feathers on one side. And the ones she still has, are hanging down. Her skin is exposed and bloody. Alice keeps pecking at it, so I put Alice in the cage. I'm afraid If I put neosporin or something like that on it, she'll just eat it. I washed it with a soapy wash cloth. I'm not going to let them together until Claire heals, because Alice won't stop picking at it. Any advice will be much appreciated.
Claire just got attacked by my dog
Yikes, poor Claire. Neosporin will absorb quickly, so I would use some. You could even fashion a "collar" like dogs wear for not licking themselves after surgery, etc. The cone shaped thing. I use Rooster Booster sulfur ointment on things like this, but hard to get in a hurry if you don't have any right now. Personally, I'd keep her warm, isolated, and with plenty of food and water. She is likely to be in a bit of shock. Rooster Booster also makes an anti-pick lotion that would be good once she starts to heal, if you want to put them together again.
I'm not a big user of antibiotics under most circumstances, but in this case, if you have some soluble terramycin or other soluble antibiotic, I would put some into her water supply just to prevent infections. If a hen apron/coat would help her not pick at herself, try that. I have heard of some people making them out of an old sweater sleeve, etc. Just cut slits and put the wings through. She can't peck under it very easily.
Another option, silly as it may look....if you have some human gauze tape in a first aid kit, put the neosporin on and then wrap her body with the gauze tape. I'm not talking about the sticky tape, just to be clear. You could keep the wings clear, or one clear, if one is worse than the other. Then she can't peck off all the gauze and it will also keep her a little less mobile which is OK while she is healing.
Extra vitamins - tomato bits, grapes, etc would not hurt.
I'm so sorry. (can't offer anything other than what cMoxon said)
Her skin in hanging down on one side, with the feathers attached. I put some neopsporin on it and wrapped it in guaze, under her wings.
I called every emergency vet in the area. Either they weren't there, or didn't do birds. Nothing like having a wounded chicken on New Years Eve. She seems to have adapted to the the guaze. We put it under her wings, so it wouldn't constrict her. I fed her some of my left over prime rib, and a whole bunch of goldfish crackers, so she seems happy for now. And since we wrapped her wounded area in guaze, she has stopped pecking at it. Wish her luck.
They don't have to treat birds. i called 15 vets here before I got smart & started asking if they would just give me a prescription for Amoxicilin so I could treat her. 4 agreed. I picked the closest one too me. I got the meds & treated him on my own as best as I could. His eye healed, his wounds healed. and my poor bird had bites from a coyote to his head. Get your phone book & look the next town out if you have too. I had to drive 30 miles to get the meds.
Amoxicilin
this is a bad time to have a wounded chicken, on New Years Eve. I'll try that. I even called CSU, the agricultural and veterinary college, but no one answered.
oh poor baby. Hope she will be alright
you can get amoxicilin not mixed here to keep on hand. It lasts a while in powder form. I'm going to keep a bottle on hand. My vet (who was on vacation that time) will give it to me. Once i knew what to ask for that they would willing give without seeing the animal i had no trouble getting it. They just didn't want to see a chicken.. & didn't want to give me a stronger medicine. i also had an extra pill of clyindamycin that i had taken left over & horridly over dosed my poor bird on that before i ever got to the vet. I figured I was either going to kill him with meds or he'd die from infection. I figured the infection was worse. So i reacted within minutes instead of thinking things thru. Not saying my actions was a good thing.. but i think the over dosing might have helped in my situation. From what i understand MOST chickens don't recover from cat or dog bites to the head, infection sets in nearly immediately & goes to the brain. He's still good. healthy.. blind in one eye & currently has a broken wing from an owl trying to kill him 3 nights ago. he's back in teh kitchen again. Being treated like a king.. who thinks he needs to crow at 5 am. I threatened to make him chicken soup this morning & he just mouthed me. I think he knows he's safe from me getting rid of him at this point.
Sounds like you have done all the right things, and all that you can do under the circumstances. I wish her well and I hope she will make it. They seem to recover better from injuries than they do from illnesses. If you can keep it clean and infection free, she may well pull through.
Chickens are VERY resilient so don't give up hope on her! I picked one up off the road that literally fell off the chicken truck - she was sitting in the turn lane in a neighboring town just stunned so I told my daughter to stop and I hopped out and picked her up. Wrapped her in a coat and took her home - saw she had a broken lower jaw/beak and figured she was done for. Well, she managed to eat and drink and seemed happy enough so I gave her a chance and before long she was running around with the rest of my flock, scratching in the cow pies and living the 'chicken good life'. LOL! She laid eggs pretty regularly (the only white eggs I got were from her) and even tried to set. She died almost a year later & I never knew why but I figured of all the chickens on that truck heading to Tyson, she was the lucky one!
Also, a lot of times you can find 'fish meds' at the local co-ops or online from a vet supply. Tetracycline, penicillin, amoxycillin, and even cephalexin w/o a script - it's labeled for fish/aquariums but you can buy it, pound it into a powder, and dose it to anything that needs it. Just don't use it indiscriminately and be sure to use it for at least 5-7 days.
Keep your hen separate until she is healed and even once healed, watch the others closely to make sure they don't pick at her before her feathers grow back. Hope she gets well soon & makes this a Happy New Year start for you!
The neo should prevent infection and wouldn't hurt her if she ingested it anyway. She wouldn't get that much in her. The skin may heal up quite nicely since you have it held back in place with the gauze. keep it dry and check it every day or so untill it starts to heal. I made some lovely, washable bandages out of a streached out tube socks for a chicken. I could just slip a new one on and put the other in the washer. It took about a week and a half for the bird to heal and she had a huge tear under her wing. All I uses was spray on neosporin. I love that stuff!
Hope all is ok.
spray on.. interesting i will have to find a bottle of that. The vet told me neosporin shouldn't hurt them if they ingest it. When i had a cat that got chased off the roof by a raccoon her jaw tore away from the bone & her teeth. She kept licking the ointment off but he said it was fine. They can't really get enough in them to harm them just by licking & i'd think a cat would lick more off than a chicken would peck. I have a bunch of socks i was goign to throw out also.. too stretched out to wear. Did you leave it as a tube or cut a hole for the one wing that wasn't injured? Did you leave them to length or cut them down to size?
Elleisn - I really hope all is well this morning. Hope you find a bit of peace & enjoyment in your New Years Day.
The neo I use come in a pen like container. I just clip it to my shirt when I'm working with the animals. I cut the foot part off the tube sock and then cup slits for the wings. It works pretty goosd for imobilizing wings with no slits. I also cut a slit so the legs could go out the bottom for one bird. It helped keep it in place.
putting this on the reference thread...
Thanks everyone.
She seemed fine this morning, she was eating, flying, and laid an egg. But now she's acting kind of sick. I'm going to Pet Smart tomorrow, and try to get some antibiotics. If they don't have any, I'll take her to a vet, even one that doesn't treat chickens. They should at least be able to tell if she's getting infected, and give me some antibiotics. I do have some spray on neosporin.
Elleisn, Sorry to hear about Clair. Hope all heals well.
The one thing I'm worried about is the fact that she has about a 4 inch round of missing skin. The wound inside her is starting to heal up, and hasnt' gotten infected, but the skin has pulled away, so she'll have to grow new skin. I called a vet today, and kept saying that my dog attacked my chicken, and she kept saying "Your chicken attacked your dog?" I'm just worried about all the missing skin. But a few years ago, my husband broke up a dog fight, and got a big wound on his leg, and it took a while, but the skin grew back. She's so sweet and trusting, when we rebandange her. She just kind of melts in our arms.
Chickens do heal amazingly from this kind of wound. I had a rooster that had all the skin removed from its head by another rooster. It tooks months, but it eventually all grew back including feathers.
If she doesn't get an infection and none of the other chickens are able to pick on her, I think she will be fine.
She's so sweet and trusting when we change her bandage. She just lays in my dh's arms, on her side and relaxes. I hate the fact that she got hurt on a holliday. But her bandage keeps both her and the other chicken fron picking at it. Nothing looks infected at this point, and actually some seems to be healing, except for the skin from coming together. So I guess she'll just have to wear a bandage for a while. I tried to be more clever this morning when I changed her bandage, ang tried to wrap it around both in front and behing her leg. Well it just pulled up, and covered over her butt, and her egg hole. Well after a bandage full of poop, we learned. We're slow people.
When that much skin is lost, the wound has to heal through granulation, which is a form of scar tissue. It's not a bad thing, as it heals from the inside out, and eliminates a lot of the infection that can occur when a wound closes too soon.
I bought some erythromycin at Pet Smart yesterday. It was labled for fish. It is in 200mg packets. I disolved one in a custard cup of water , and the first time gave her 2 eyedroppers full, and last night gave her 3 eyedroppers full. She is about 8 pounds, does any body know just how much of this I should be giving her? She's eating and talking but this morning started limping. Her wound is in such an odd place, partly her thigh and partly her breast. I'm not sure what is causing her to limp, It might be that the bandage is constricting her leg movement. We changed it this morning, so I tried to get it enough in front of her leg, so she can walk ok.
idk on that one. I found an orythomycin at Tractor Supply this morning in liquid form for horses.. any one know if that would work for chickens? It was $12 for about a 5 oz bottle. I'll keep it on hand if it will work. I'll google it also but i was just curious if you all knew anything about it.
erythromycin.. haven't' found that one yet.. I'll google it too Elleisn. See what I find. I looked at our Pets Mart but didn't find that.
First, I am not a Vet.
Plumbs Veterinary Drug Handbook lists the avian dosage as 60 mgs/kg of oral suspension every 12 hrs.
You'll have to figure the weight of your bird, convert to kgs (or adjust the dosage to mgs/lb) and make a suspension that will allow you to measure the correct dose.
I'm not sure it's appropriate to post more specifics, and I'm feeling a bit math-challenged when I try to do it for someone else. Too much at stake. Revival Animal health used to be willing to advise on that kind of conversion, but I think that was when you bought from them:)
And then some antibiotics work for well for some disease and some types of animals and not others...
I googled what i found.. found nothing on it kept getting thrown back to the meds that Elleisn found... erythromycin. idk about Chickens, found nothing about how to use it, if it works well, what types of infections to use it for or anything else but i am going to question my doctor as to why when this antibiotic is commonly used for people allergic to penicillin why he continues to give me the penicillin antibiotic that I'm highly allergic to & then a steroid instead of a non penicillin based one... I did not know such a thing existed. This makes me very happy. :)
I guess i'll just run by the vet's office tomorrow & grab a couple of the non mixed bottles of the amoxicilin. It won't kill me to have them on hand & they work for my cats as well.
GreyK - I don't think there is a drug called orythomycin.
There is:
erithromycin
aureomycin
terramycin
duramycin (which is Tetracycline hydrochloride)
oleandomycin
troleandomycin
spiramycin
josamycin
tylosin
vancomycin
Sometimes there are brand names, so for example, oxytetracycline is sold as all of these names:
* LA-200
* Oxy-Tet 200
* Bio-Mycin 200
* Liquamycin LA 200
* Geomycin 200
* Agrimycin 200
* Maxim 200
Is it possible you wrote the name down wrong?
Disclaimer: I am not a vet! Just trying to sort out what the product was!
Amount you have: 200 milligrams of erythromycin
Goal: In chickens, 5.0 to 17.8 mg/lb per day for 7 days (let's say an average of 10 mg/lb/day)
Chicken weight - let's say 5 lbs on average, but you could weigh her to be sure
10 mg/lb goal dose x 5 lbs weight = 50 mg per day goal dose
If your packet is 200 mg, and you mix it into 1 cup of water, she should get 1/4 cup of water a day for the full 50 mg per day dose. This should be for 7 days.
If she is a lot different from 5 lbs, we can re-do the math.
Again, disclaimer: I am not a vet, but I can do math and I based the goal weight on the Merck veterinary manual.
I"m starting to think i did.... which means I am way way exhausted bc i have a photographic memory... and i read the bottle twice. i am sure it started with an O & it was a mycin.. bc i remmeber thinking.. I wonder if I"m allergic to that.
Thank you all so much for all you advice and moral support. Since she was limping so much today, we finally took her to the vet. She weighed her and figured out how much of the antibiotics to give her. She told us to keep changing the bandage twice a day, and that if she didn't get infected in the next day or two, she would heal. She said that when her skin grew back, her feathers wouldn't. Oh well I wasn't going to enter in a beauty contest anyway. But she now has a very pretty pink bandgage, and everybody in the vet's office, just fell in love with her. She is just so sweet. You guys are the best.
CMoxon, where did the dosage recommendation come from? Obviously chickens need a different dose than other birds (as do ratites), and I'd like to have those references available. MKy favorite Vet throws up her hands at the chickens and cows *g*.
Maybe time to update my critter library, any thoughts?
And, any tips on how you make sure they consume the entire 1/4 cup, especially if it tastes nasty? I admit to being much more accustomed to treating mammals, but I always try for the smallest volume possible when trying to get meds into anything alive and kicking, unless, by some miracle, it tastes good :).
I rely on the Merk Veterinary Manual for dosage information.
My vet yesterday told me to mix it with some food she really likes. She suggested applesauce or cottage cheese. I told her that what she really loves, and will always eat is raw hamburger. She said that would work, just make sure you separate them when you give it to her, so she get's the whole amount. The vet said that the erythromycin would work, but wasn't really the best. Since she wasn't infected, and she's now on her 4th day, if she doesn't develop an infection in the next couple days, she should recover.
Catmad - as Porkpal said, the Merck Veterinary Manual is an excellent reference.
Here is the reference I used last night:
http://www.drugs.com/vet/gallimycin-pfc.html
I used it because it gave specifics on the dosage for drinking water - scroll down on the page to the section called "mixing instructions for drinking water" and gave the required dose right there, so I thought that was a fairly easy calculation based on what elleisn had found.
I have not had chickens turn up their noses (beaks?) at antibiotics in their water. I guess the best way would be by syringe if they did, but if you have an isolated chicken with a water cup, it would normally not be unexpected to have them drink at least 1/4 cup of water in a day. I haven't had trouble with that aspect, not that I use antibiotics with any regularity. I have only used them for injury infection prevention and for some respiratory problems over a year ago.
The reason I suggested the erythromycin is because I know it is available without a prescription (i.e. the fish pills or through Tractor Supply, etc). Not all the antibiotics are available like that. I also knew it was safe for poultry because I used it for respiratory problems I had in my flock. See http://www.merckvetmanual.com/mvm/index.jsp?cfile=htm/bc/203402.htm.
Another good resource (although it might not be something you'd think of) is the Jeffers Livestock site. They have a lot of soluble antibiotics:
http://www.jefferslivestock.com/ssc/products.asp?CID=2&mscssid=XP9NCCT3XL9E8MEKX27W83QC2C0T6CV6&BrowseList=452&dept_id=413
What I like best about their site is that when you look down through the listing, you can see what animals each can be used on. So for example, on that link, the first one is SMZ, and if you click on the product name it takes you to another page with a link for "View manufacturer and/or label information." If you click on that, it gives you the dose rates and all the required info right there. So even if you didn't buy the meds from them, you have the dose info. Click on the link for the SMZ and you'll see that it tells you what diseases it treats in cattle, swine, and then it says chickens and turkeys. Under that, you see dosage for cattle and then poultry. It even gives you a nice 2 tbsp per gallon which is a lot easier than mixing the 128 gallon whole package! It also tells you that this will provide the recommended dose of 58 to 85 mg/lb/day.
All the antibiotics they sell have this info, and it's free for the reading!
She also put some silver ointment on her, before she rebandaged her. She said that while the neoprorin was good and would work, the silver would encourage regrowth of her skin. I happen to have some that I got from my doctor when I got burned. Again thank you all.
Ah yes, I have some bandages, I think made by Curad, that have silver in them for improved healing. They are white with a sort of pad inside like a regular bandaid, but they are kind of spongy feeling, and they stick very well. I have found them to be excellent on deeper cuts, etc. (these are people bandages, but I'm sure the same technology applies).
The vet also told me to give her a bath. Soak all the poop off her butt, which started to cake because of the antiobiotics, and to wash off all the blood that had dried. I thought I did that with the soapy wash cloth, but apparently not enough. Has anyone given a chicken a bath? The thought of giving my cat a bath scares me enough, but a mad wet hen???
I know they bath chickens for shows and they tolerate it...although there is that saying....