Duck attacked

Greetings everyone!

Yesterday evening, we found one of my daughter's ducks standing a bit odd with Hazey eyes. When we looked closer at him we realized he had wounds on both sides of his head. We brought him inside and rinsed his head as it was matted from dried blood. Nothing appears to be too deep.
Problem is, we believe he has a damaged neck. He cannot preen his chest feathers and his head seems unstable. He did not eat or drink last night. He is drinking currently, but has not shown interest in food. However, we have mixed food into his water, so he is getting some nutrients.
His poop last night was light mint green, currently it is mint green with a darker green mixed in. He is quacking a bit now too. His eyes look more normal today also. He is a silver welsh harlequin named Oaty.

He is in our tub, so please ignore how messy. His feed is everywhere as he kept knocking the dish over. Also, the quality of the pictures is poor, sorry. The picture of him with his head down is him trying to preen himself.

If anyone has any suggestions, please share. We do not have a vet to treat him in the area and we would like to keep him alive Thank you very much!

When you say no Vet in area, you mean that works with poultry or in general? Sorry I recently had a duck that was attacked and though the vets in our area did not traditionally work on poultry, the emergency vet agreed to look at ours and see what they could do. Just a thought. I hope he recovers, he reminds me of my welshie drake that we lost. Good Luck!

Thank you! The local vets won't treat ducks, most do not treat poultry period. All the vets around here say they know very little about ducks In fact, a few I have spoke with knew less than my daughter and I, yikes!

Learningstill said:

Thank you! The local vets won't treat ducks, most do not treat poultry period. All the vets around here say they know very little about ducks

In fact, a few I have spoke with knew less than my daughter and I, yikes!

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He may be okay but might take a while, if he doesn't have any deep wounds any where else? Any idea what did this? could something have grabbed him through fencing? Neck is probably stiff from the attack and sore too.
Swims in some nice warm water may help but stay right with him. He can then clean himself up and preen a little as for his wounds did you wash them out real good? You can make your own saline rinse and that would be good for washing his head just don't get it in his eyes. but 1/8 tea to 1 cup of warm water also there is Veterycin for wounds and infections that can just be sprayed on and will help to heal.@Learningstill

Miss Lydia said:

He may be okay but might take a while, if he doesn't have any deep wounds any where else?  Any idea what did this? could something have grabbed him through fencing?  Neck is probably stiff from the attack and sore too. 
Swims in some nice warm water may help but stay right with him.  He can then clean himself up and preen a little as for his wounds did you wash them out real good?  You can make your own saline rinse and that would be good for washing his head just don't get it in his eyes. but 1/8 tea to 1 cup of warm water also there is Veterycin for wounds and infections that can just be sprayed on and will help to heal.@Learningstill

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Thanks for the response! None of his wounds are really deep. It seems like maybe a hawk attempted to grab him by the head and maybe could not lift him enough to kill him. There are no other wounds. The wounds on the sides on his head are about the same distance as a medium size to large size hawk's talons apart. Our guess is that either it lifted him and dropped him or tried to overpower him by his neck. His only injuries are his neck and side of the head. He cannot reach his oil gland or preen normally, so I will keep him indoors for a few days. I will help him clean himself until he gains some more strength back in his neck. I also do not want any of our bigger drakes to beat him up.

What type of tea do you mean? I cleaned his head thoroughly with warm water and a tooth brush. The cuts were already closed when we found him, so I only cleaned the surface and feathers. His feathers are now normal for the most part. The wounds look fine. I am mostly worried about internal damage and his neck.

I am also concerned about him not eating. Any ideas to entice him? I have moistened the food and tried dry. I have also tried bread cause he would normally go crazy for a treat like that as we hardly ever give them bread since it is unhealthy.

Learningstill said:

Thanks for the response! None of his wounds are really deep. It seems like maybe a hawk attempted to grab him by the head and maybe could not lift him enough to kill him. There are no other wounds. The wounds on the sides on his head are about the same distance as a medium size to large size hawk's talons apart. Our guess is that either it lifted him and dropped him or tried to overpower him by his neck. His only injuries are his neck and side of the head. He cannot reach his oil gland or preen normally, so I will keep him indoors for a few days. I will help him clean himself until he gains some more strength back in his neck. I also do not want any of our bigger drakes to beat him up.

What type of tea do you mean? I cleaned his head thoroughly with warm water and a tooth brush. The cuts were already closed when we found him, so I only cleaned the surface and feathers. His feathers are now normal for the most part. The wounds look fine. I am mostly worried about internal damage and his neck.

I am also concerned about him not eating. Any ideas to entice him? I have moistened the food and tried dry. I have also tried bread cause he would normally go crazy for a treat like that as we hardly ever give them bread since it is unhealthy.

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It's not tea but teaspoon of salt and warm water for rinsing his wounds. Your probably right if a raccoon got hold of him he'd most likely be headless. I would think his neck is very sore and stiff keeping him in and giving him TLC is important right now I'd still try a warm bath might get his neck muscle to relax a bit you know how much warm water makes you feel relaxed. If he isn't eating by tomorrow you might want to think of tube feeding him to get some nourishment in him He can't go long with out eating..

Oh haha! I thought tea seemed a bit odd :/
I did give him a warm bath already today and I blew dry his feathers. He seemed to enjoy the warm air. He was very calm and closing his eyes and standing still on my lap. I used a tooth brush to softly brush his feathers to keep them from stiffening.

I have never tubed a duck before. Could I use a syringe and give him water downed food instead? I have put food in his water so he has been getting some nutrients... Probably not nearly enough

Thank you for all your input. It really helps to have others chime in

Learningstill said:

Oh haha! I thought tea seemed a bit odd

I did give him a warm bath already today and I blew dry his feathers. He seemed to enjoy the warm air. He was very calm and closing his eyes and standing still on my lap. I used a tooth brush to softly brush his feathers to keep them from stiffening.

I have never tubed a duck before. Could I use a syringe and give him water downed food instead? I have put food in his water so he has been getting some nutrients... Probably not nearly enough

Thank you for all your input. It really helps to have others chime in

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If you use a syringe you have to slowly put food right inside the bill so not to get it into his air sac by accident. But it would work just time consuming. Put it inside his bill then wait till he swallows then more.

Hope he is feeling better this morning.

Update:

Our little Oaty seems to being heading toward a full recovery, yay! Which is very surprising as he got so bad that he lost tons of weight, was breathing really hard, lost the ability to walk and would lose his balance and flip upside down.
We were going to cull him, when we started to notice he was showing interest in food again. We put him in the chicken coop and he has slowly started to regain his strength and ability to walk steadily. He is eating on his own again and drinking. He still has not been able to hold his head normally or preen, but he is showing more interest in preening and his neck seems to be getting stronger and closer to normal looking. Due to his lack or nutrition and ability to clean himself all the feathers around his eyes are gone, so he looks strange. He kept itchy his eyes with his feet. I think the wounds may have damaged his ear or ears and he kept scratching to attempt to fix.
We are very excited for him and us as he is our only silver welsh harlequin drake. We have a golden welsh drake named Barley, but we were unsure how he would affect the show quality.
His recovery has been long, and he had many days of suffering, but it seems like that all is in the past now.
After Oaty was attacked, we found one of our mallard girls dead Shortly after we disposed of her remains, we found one of our silver Appleyard drakes attacked the same as Oaty except his neck seemed strong and wounded, but he did have a big chunk of breast feathers and skin ripped off. He is okay and has healed well. Thank God we have not had anymore problems. We are pretty sure it was an owl. Hopefully it will stay away!