Hole in back of neck- will it close? vet says cull *update* - Page 3

Hi Miss Pink, I hate this for u, but on a good note. . . . we have a outside cat that came up with a huge knot on her shoulder. A day or two after i noticed it, It opened an drained. . gross I know. The hole was very deep an every day doubled in size similar to ur chick .  Three days in, we used This:  the brand FARNAM the name WOUND-KOTE   info under name Blue Lotion Spray Wound Dressing for horses, ponies, cattle an dogs              Well it worked.  Like magic!      BUT I KNOW NOTHING OF CHICKENS, OR WHAT IS GOOD FOR THEM SO PLEASE USE YOUR BEST JUDGMENT !!!!!!    I would hate to make things worse.   All I know is I was worried about losing my cat, an it was worth the try.  Everyday the hole got smaller, dried up, closed, she does not even have a scar .   Best wishes!!! 

O, an I got it from Atwoods, no more than maybe $10. . . .I sprayed it once a day for 2 or 3 days, then every other day  twice. . . done. Looks purple, like the spray you showed in the last pic. 

We are new to this but just had this happen.  Our rooster had pecked a hole at least that large before I realized it.  The lady at our Feed and Seed told me to clean it with water and then spray with  the blue stuff.  After you spray the area get a large amount of Vaseline and put on top of the spray.  This will help it stay and they do not like the taste of the Vaseline.  It helped mine alot but it will be slow to heal just keep re applying every 3-4 days.  We used q-tips to help get it down and also put some around the outside feathers so there is not any open places for the others to peck.

You can debride the wound yourself.  Get some sterile dry gauze(2x2 or 4x4, not the rolls), and some sterile saline solution (if you can find that use contact lens solution(new bottle)).  Wash your hand really well (scrub them, then do it again).  Fluff up the gauze moisten with the saline solution.  Stuff it into the wound.  Leave it there til it dries 12 hours or 24 hours (up to you).  Then pull it out, it will be nasty and the wound may start to bleed.  The bleeding is actually a good thing.  Only healthy tissue will bleed.  Once the wound bed is a nice red color, like raw meat, just clean it with saline daily.  If the edges of the wound are curling under, the wound will not heal properly.  You will have to cut the edges that are curling under off.  Use a sharp pair of straight edged hair cutting scissors or something similar.  Drop them in isopropyl alcohol 70% for a couple minutes before hand.  This will not be completely clean, but then a chicken isn't either.

I would advise against using honey, it may have botulism spores in it.  This is why you should not give babies under 12 months old honey.  Their immune system is not developed completely yet.

Hope this helps.

Ouch, good luck.

That dead and dying tissue needs to be removed. 

I had a hen heal up from a huge deep wound, but it was a dog attack, cleaned immediately, packed with neosporin/wrapped, isolated, and not given a chance for infection. Took a month of care in the house, but healed up with no issue. All the "meat" was still fresh in the wound we had to deal with. 

My birds are livestock though, so had the wound not been fresh, I'd have culled her. 

Had a few puncture wounds like that on a few of my meat chicks...one had bubbles coming out from the location(in the neck).  I dumped some iodine on them and coated them with NuStock.  I don't know if that did the trick or the treatment my dog gave them a few days later...caught him all snuggled down with 20 meaty chicks and he had one between his paws licking it.  Nothing like dog slobbers to clean out a wound! 

When I processed I could barely tell which birds were injured but did locate one deep scar tissue site on a thigh, scar was in the muscle fiber. 

How is it doing?  I had a chick that had a wound on his head from other chicks pecking it. I put a little bit of hydrogen peroxide on it and neosporin. but I wouldn't do that on your chicken because I didn't know what I was doing then. But it did work, it healed up fine.

See if your vet or personal doctor might write a prescription for silver nitrate to help debried the necrotic tissue. You can get it in "sticks" and you touch it to the dead tissue. It's used in burn patients.

It almost looks like it's trying to heal 'open'...and who knows, if it does she could possibly just live with a hole. A fistula. Her body may develop other ways to keep her cavity inside protected. Like someone can live with a tracheostomy opening...  you may need to develop a necj wrap of sorts to keep it from getting drit inside on a long term basis.

Birds can be tough creatures. We have a turkey in isolationc ause our ducks keep eating at her. she has a HUGE nasty wound to the muscle under her wing...but she keeps on going...