deacons
Songster
My poor little Wyandotte hen (Ro) has had a rough summer and early fall. She had a really awful case of bumblefoot that required serious vet intervention, and then went into a heavy molt. Today, while out freeranging, my flock got buzzed by a low flyover from a pair of hawks. The hawks didn't get anyone, thankfully, but in the chaos of them all diving for cover, I think Ro must have collided with a tree trunk or a fencepost and injured her beak.
When I checked everyone over, the first thing I saw was blood dripping down her beak. I thought maybe the top beak had cracked or chipped badly under her nostril, but on closer inspection, it just looks like a surface scrape, almost like when you skin your knee. Luckily it clotted really quickly and wasn't a massive amount of blood loss- from reading some other threads, sounds like injured beaks can bleed a lot.
I'm thankful it's nothing serious, but how in the world do I keep this kind of injury clean and keep infection out?
Within 5 minutes of it happening, it was already this dirty with stuff stuck on it:
I didn't have any saline handy, so I sprayed it off with Vetricyn spray, gently wiped off the debris with some q-tips, and then applied some neosporin. Once cleaned, it didn't look too terrible:
She's in the hospital crate now to hopefully keep dirt out of it while it's still fresh. Will it scab over? I don't like to clean healing wounds too often, but should I be doing anything different because of where this is located?
When I checked everyone over, the first thing I saw was blood dripping down her beak. I thought maybe the top beak had cracked or chipped badly under her nostril, but on closer inspection, it just looks like a surface scrape, almost like when you skin your knee. Luckily it clotted really quickly and wasn't a massive amount of blood loss- from reading some other threads, sounds like injured beaks can bleed a lot.
I'm thankful it's nothing serious, but how in the world do I keep this kind of injury clean and keep infection out?
Within 5 minutes of it happening, it was already this dirty with stuff stuck on it:
I didn't have any saline handy, so I sprayed it off with Vetricyn spray, gently wiped off the debris with some q-tips, and then applied some neosporin. Once cleaned, it didn't look too terrible:
She's in the hospital crate now to hopefully keep dirt out of it while it's still fresh. Will it scab over? I don't like to clean healing wounds too often, but should I be doing anything different because of where this is located?