Please Help! What antibiotic to use for an abscess? How long can I tube feed and give SQ fluids?

So, last week either Monday evening or early Tuesday morning, I think raccoons chased my chickens around from the outside of the dog kennel they live in. I thought they could have hidden on one side of the kennel and I have extra wire around the corners, but apparently this still wasn't enough. (For now that's not the point and I've been working on making it safer for my chickens.) Anyway, one hen was totally fine, my rooster lost some tail feathers and my other hen I found on Tuesday very depressed and missing a lot of feathers. Her only noticeable injury was to one side of her face, her eye was swollen closed and she had blood in the feathers of her earlobe.

Initially I put some ointment in her eye and gave her some aspirin. By the next day, Wednesday, much of the swelling had gone down, but she was still not eating and was basically just sitting or standing around like she was sleeping. She was also making a little bit of a raspy noise when she breathed on Wednesday, so on the recommendation of a vet friend I started her on antibiotics (tylosin) Wednesday afternoon for both a possible respiratory issue and wounds I may not have found. By the time I got home from work late Wednesday night she still was not eating or drinking, so I tube fed her and gave her subcutaneous fluids.

Basically since then I've been tubing her, giving her sc fluids and antibiotics, but she only improved a little bit. She became brighter and more alert through Friday, but hasn't really changed since then.

She's had 4 days of antibiotics and I'm keen to stop them to see if that's part of what's making her feel poorly, but I also worry about stopping them when she's still not well.

Anyway, I was just wondering if anyone has any experience with this sort of unknown trauma. Also, any experience with having a chicken feel poorly while on antibiotics? What's the longest anyone has tube fed or given sc fluids?

Thanks in advance!

Sara

Raccoons will grab the chicken by the head so they can kill it quickly and eat in peace.
Go through her feathers on her head and neck real well, especially underneath.
If you find a wound, clean it with betadine, (iodine) and pack with Campho-Phenique and/or Neosporin.
Continue with the antibiotic eye ointment.
Are you giving the antibiotic subcutaneously, intramuscular or oral?
If you don't find a wound, I'd probably stop the anti-biotic.

I could only get a hold of Tylan 50, not Tylan 200, so I was supposed to give 1.2mls IM! Instead of giving her that much in the muscle twice a day, and since I found a lot of sources that said it could be given orally, I gave the morning dose IM and the evening dose orally when I tube fed her.


This is a picture of her face, looking all greasy from triple antibiotic ointment. It's not very impressive and wasn't even all that swollen to begin with. Just the patch of dried blood over her ear. Her eye seems totally fine. The minor abrasions on her comb have been healing. These were the only wounds I found.


One of the initial theories was that the raccoons may have damaged her trachea, but that doesn't seem to be the case. She was missing a few handfuls of feathers from her neck, but no bruising that I could see.

That blood by the ear is probably a wound. I'd clean that up with iodine or saline and gauze. I had a raccoon attacked bird look almost exactly the same. Deeper wound though.
If you do the IM, swap breasts because they can get sore. After a couple days of IM, I'd switch to subcutaneous under the back skin.
Make sure you clean the point of needle entry with alcohol and use a fresh needle.

Well I went out to take another look at her wound and I still can't get any of that dried blood off. I did notice when I looked at her head from behind, that area is still somewhat swollen so I went ahead and gave her another dose of Tylosin, subcutaneous this time. She does protest more when handled, so maybe she is slowly getting better.

For giving IM injections it was recommended to me to use 4 sites, cranial and caudal on each side of the breast muscle, so that it what I have been doing.

So, a few vets that have seen pictures have said it pretty much looks like a wound and abscess. Right now I'm trying to hot compress it and start to get some of the scab off. She has now been on Tylan for a week and one veterinarian has recommended switching her to Oxytet. He gave me a dose, straight out of a book, of 5mg/kg IM once or twice a day. Anyone have any experience with Oxytet for something like this? I've read other dosing recommendations that are pretty different, but those are all for respiratory disease.

So I pulled the scab off, I felt really bad ripping all of the feathers out. There is no visible wound. It is fairly swollen around her ear and I'm wondering if this is an abscess. I'm not really sure what to do at this point. I stopped antibiotics after her Tuesday morning dose which was day 7. I was hoping she would start eating after coming off the antibiotics, but no luck so far! Actually no changes at all for the better or worse. It was recommended by one vet, who hasn't actually seen her, to change to treating with oxytetracylcine. I'm just wondering what antibiotics others have used for treating wounds or abscesses? Would penicillin be better? I just can't decide how long I should keep going with tubing and fluids if she is not going to eat, the difficult thing is she's very quiet, but doesn't look that ill.

I

I think penicillin in the form of Pen G or triple Pen (usually at farm stores) would be good but if you can get some food and water in her that would probably be just as good since you've been treating her the way you have.
I think what you're looking at IS the wound, it looks a lot like my bird. They heal very quickly.

Just an update in case someone gets to this thread on a search. My hen's face is looking much better, the swelling around her ear goes down a little everyday and doesn't seem to be a problem. I'm thinking now it's not an abscess.

The problem now is that she has watery poop and, although she's started picking at food when I put her out with the other chickens, she' not eating or drinking nearly enough. A few days into the injury on 7/3 she weighed 2369g and now she weighs around 2200g. I've been feeding her 2-3x /day and/or giving subcutaneous fluids and using her weight as a way to try to keep up with hydration.

Recently, on two other threads and specifically from cartpony, I got some more information on tube feeding and also on deworming:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...-and-give-subcutaneous-fluid/50#post_11650786

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...-for-visuals-very-detailed-post#post_11657515

So currently I'm trying to tube feed her 120 mls of food and water twice a day while I'm deworming her at 30mg/kg of fenbendazole daily for 3 days. I'm really hoping her poop will firm up as in the second thread above!

Just wondering how your hen is doing?