one of my roosters has black spots on his comb & wattles. (pretty much they all do) I didn't think too much of it at first but now his head is swelling & his eyes are stuck shut making him blind. Any idea if it is from frost bite or if there's something else going on. He seems alright other than he can't see. I pull his eyes open every so often & he gets along just fine till they matt back down. It started with one eye now its spread to two of them. Any suggestions as to what I should do? I've already got one in the house.. I could bring him in but idk what to do with him beyond that.
Frost bite
Sounds like he has one heck of a case of frostbite.. you can wait until his wattles & comb fall off, but it looks as if you might end up with a bit of infection. If he is a calm bird, you can hold teabags (used warm bags Not hot) on his eyes, it will calm the swelling and help keep the infection at bay.. not to mention pull what infection might be there out...
Keep the comb clean & dry.. try a little vasaline.. I know it's a little late, we use vasaline as a frost-bite preventitve.. but it will help sooth.
Don't beat yourself up too much.. I have so many of my roosters right now that have frostbite..
You might try a little soluable antibiotic in his water.
the funny thing is he is the one with the least amount of black on him. Looks like you took a fine point sharpy & black dotted him maybe 20 times. That's it.
Thanks! I'll do that tomorrow morning. I"ll have to go get tea. Will straight Lipton work?
Hmmm, that is a bit odd. Sounds more like a fight to me. Mine with frostbite (most of 'em) have black areas, all the tips of their combs, some further down, and some on the bottom of their wattles. They are black areas, not just black dots. I also have a couple with frozen toes. Some frozen entirely solid. I hate that. Their toes will fall off eventually. We really need to work on better housing for next year. We have wall panel heaters, heat lamps, and hay, and we still get frostbite on combs and toes. Argh.
But the lots of tiny black dots sounds different...
mine don't fight.. i watch them since i work at home.. but all but one looks like someone threw little speckles of black paint at thier combs. THIS ONE slept in the tree in 15 degree weather & refused to come out. we've never had chickens with frost bite. in all the years we've had chickens.. never. our houses have never been heated. They've always done well. This is one of Nutmegs babies. i've got him inside with me on my lap right now. i found a couple bags of tea. putting those on the very unwilling subject. Speckles is not happy. Lucky (his brother) is growling form the box where he can hear Speckles complaining. this is going to be one long night. o.. i've got one who looks like you dipped his comb in black paint.. i figure he's going to loose it totally. and he was such a beauty.
Ours in the barn are out of the wind, but it's still below zero in there even without wind, so they are really cold. If they stay near the heater or the heat lamps, it's closer to 15 degrees if they are lucky.
i just crawled into 1 of my coops to pull him out. Its probably 25 inside the coop.. maybe 30. It actually stays pretty decent inside & they huddle so I"m sure they are warmer. He was snuggling with his sisters & was pretty warm when i found him. They had him squashed btwn them.
I think part of them got frost bite 1. bc of the freezing rain they wouldn't stay out of.. 2. bc of the snow melting on them. 3... snow got into the coop the one night the wind blew from the east at 50 mph. That is probably when the worst of it happened. It was kinda slushy snow & fozen to them. I'm thinking of stapling muslin over the vent areas, where the snow blew in. So they still get air flow but it will block snow coming in. i don't' really want to put plastic on it. I think it will block the ventilation too much.