Help! Chicken with exposed trachea and esophagus and damage to his esophagus due to self injury

When my chicken tried to resist while I am holding him, he peeled off the skin on his neck with his sharp toe nail. I tried to carry all of my chickens the same way as I did to him, but so far, he is the only one who can and will put his sharp nail on his neck while resisting. I tried to clean the wound after giving him albendazole for internal parasites. On that time, some of his feathers are stuck on the wound, and it is really difficult to take them out since it is stuck on the blood. So, I tried to get water from the faucet, while I am holding him on one hand. As I am doing that, he hurt his self again, on the same area, but this time, his toenail either went through his esophagus or trachea, or he just scratched one of them. I spent almost 2 hours trying to clean his wound without any human assistance.

The wound is is about 1 1/2 inches in diameter, and I saw a thick liquid that has bubbles on it, and it is light yellow in color near the hole or scratched area. If there is indeed a hole, then it might be only as wide as the tip of a nail. I applied triple antibiotic ointment on the surface of it's wound, after I am done cleaning it.

What should I do? How long will it take for the hole to be fully covered? Is it ok to feed him food and water, even if his esophagus has a hole?

When he is eating dry feed today, I saw two 1/3rd of a pellet size feed came out of the hole. After he drunk a lot of water, a lot of watery feed and water came out of the hole. Watery feed and water, is also dripping out of his mouth.

Should I feed him a little amount of wet feed for the next few days? Is the damage to the esophagus lining going to regenerate?

Luckybaby said:

When he is eating dry feed today, I saw two 1/3rd of a pellet size feed came out of the hole. After he drunk a lot of water, a lot of watery feed and water came out of the hole. Watery feed and water, is also dripping out of his mouth.

Should I feed him a little amount of wet feed for the next few days? Is the damage to the esophagus lining going to regenerate?

Click to expand...

The best advice I could give is get the bird to an avian vet as soon as you can.

An avian vet will probably charged at least few hundreds of dollars. My mom will definitely not spend that much for this chicken and I don't have that much of money. He is not an ornamental chicken, and he have a lot of capillary worms (I saw a lot of dead(since they are not moving) capillary worms on the area near the wound). Due to how he look like, most people will probably eat him rather than keep him alive as a pet. I won't kill my own pet.

Does the esophagus heal by itself? That is all what I need to know for now.

About 40 hours after the injury, food still leaks out of the hole in the esophagus. The actual size is probably 3/4 of the diameter of the head of a small nail.

You need to find a way to close the wound. Maybe super glue? Would be helpful if you could post a picture.

-Kathy

Luckybaby said:

An avian vet will probably charged at least few hundreds of dollars. My mom will definitely not spend that much for this chicken and I don't have that much of money. He is not an ornamental chicken, and he have a lot of capillary worms (I saw a lot of dead(since they are not moving) capillary worms on the area near the wound). Due to how he look like, most people will probably eat him rather than keep him alive as a pet. I won't kill my own pet.

Does the esophagus heal by itself? That is all what I need to know for now.

About 40 hours after the injury, food still leaks out of the hole in the esophagus. The actual size is probably 3/4 of the diameter of the head of a small nail.

Click to expand...

Take that bird to the vet with that story and tell the vet you'd be willing to make payments or anything if he/she will save your bird. Make good on the payments the vet agrees upon.

casportpony said:

You need to find a way to close the wound. Maybe super glue? Would be helpful if you could post a picture.

-Kathy

Click to expand...

I thought about using superglue today. Is it safe to use it? Is it going to come off, when I put it on the healing skin? What brand of superglue should I buy?

The wound on the picture above is 50 hours old.

I really don't know how to take better picture. Actually it was my mom who did it, and both of us don't know how to do it. The hole is near the white and yellow stuff on the bottom of the wound. After eating feeds today, I saw that up to about 1/4 or 1/5 of the size of average pellet comes out of the hole.

Of course a vet is the best option, but I understand they're expensive. To me the wound looks dirty, so if it were mine I would clean it really well with betadine. Is you Mom willing to buy you some tube feeding supplies? If so, I could teach you how to tube feed and doing that would allow you to keep the wound free of food contaminants. If she won't buy Kaytee Baby Bird Food, you could try super glue (do a google search for crop surgery and glue, that might tell you what type to buy). I think you would need to insert a tube while closing the wound to keep the glue in the right place. Make sense?

-Kathy

The yellow stuff at the bottom, is that food or is it that hard, cheese like chicken pus?

-Kathy