Hen has 2 large nasty blisters on comb! Help!!

This is my leghorn who is about a year and a half old. I just noticed the blisters this morning. Other than the blisters she seems to be acting normal. She isn't eating her layer pellets as much as I would like but she will eat anything else we give her. One of her blisters is yellow and looks infected and the other is kinda clear and filled with liquid. I'm going to put pictures of them below. I have no idea what this could be or how to treat it. I thought that it might be fowl pox so I already separated her. I put iodine on her 2 blisters and wattles then I covered her comb and wattles in vasoline. Was this a good idea? Should I keep her separated? Should I keep treating her with iodine and vasoline? I still don't know what this is so please give me your opinion if you know. I want to know what it is and how to treat it. Any advice will be helpful and welcomed! Ps: we just had a big artic freeze last night. It's been around the 40s and 50s but last night it dropped to 15 degrees and the wind was blowing hard. She was inside the coop all night and was protected from the wind in there. Does this have to do with the drop in temperature?

Welcome to BYC. You sometimes have to have 10 posts in order to post pictures, so you might want to make a few more posts. It would be helpful to see pictures to figure out what it is. Is it on the tips of the comb? Could it be frostbite? Fowl pox is very common, but it is a virus carried by mosquitoes in warmer weather, especially in late summer or fall, but it still may be found in the deep south of the US. Hopefully, we can see your picture soon.

It isn't on the tips of the comb. one is on the side and the other is kind of on the edge.
Ok hopefully the pictures will show up with this post, let me know if they don't. thanks.

I think it could be frostbite. It looks like she has a touch of frostbite on the bottle of her wattles, too, perhaps from taking a drink of water in the freezing temperatures. Don't handle her comb or wattles since they will be very painful, and you can cause more damage or bleeding. the others may peck her comb, so look out for that, or isolate her. Try to make your coop draft-free, but provide some high up ventilation to let out moisture, which is the cause of frostbite. Here is a good link or two to read on frostbite in chickens:
http://www.the-chicken-chick.com/2013/12/frostbit-in-backyard-chickens-causes.html
http://www.tillysnest.com/2013/01/frostbite-and-backyard-chickens.html

I have a set of Buff Orpentons they are about 5 mo old. Weve had some serious cold here (30-15 degreese) for a week or more at times. However, all my chickens are blocked from direct wind and have heat lamps in their houses. These Orpentons have been caged up in their house. This is the goats pen and house. (Im trying to keep hawks away from these chicks)
Anyway.... tonight one of these hens was down in the corner if the cage and when I pulled her out I noticed a blister like this over her left eye. Ive seen frost bite and this aint it.

realreggie69 said:

I have a set of Buff Orpentons they are about 5 mo old. Weve had some serious cold here (30-15 degreese) for a week or more at times. However, all my chickens are blocked from direct wind and have heat lamps in their houses. These Orpentons have been caged up in their house. This is the goats pen and house. (Im trying to keep hawks away from these chicks)
Anyway.... tonight one of these hens was down in the corner if the cage and when I pulled her out I noticed a blister like this over her left eye. Ive seen frost bite and this aint it.

Click to expand...

Welcome to BYC. Can you post a picture of the eye? You may need to post a couple of more times to do that. Pecking of the eye lids or a respiratory disease can sometimes cause swelling around the eye.

Unfortunately we figured out what it was my hand has. It's Marek's disease. It's a herpes virus that has no cure. Which explains the water blister above her eye. It also affects the nervous system usually on the right side which causes paralysis. The only thing I can figure is some hawks have brought the virus in. [/IMG][/IMG]

Its merecks disease.

The upper blister on your hen's comb blister looks a lot like this. This was a chick, Scout, we had who got his feet wet at the waterer when it was 17 below zero. The top photo is his left foot, the bottom photo is his right. His feet literally had literally frozen. I'm not medically qualified to tell you what to do with your hen's comb, but I know what I did. I opened those blisters and then used Betadine for the first night. Then I switched to plain old castor oil, which has surprisingly good healing properties and increases circulation. It made all of the difference, although the actual damage went too deep and his feet deformed badly. I know, I scoffed when @Beekissed recommended the castor oil treatment too, but she was right!

You can read his full story as well as his treatment schedule by clicking on his link in my signature down below the text of this post.

But Scout ended up growing up just fine....he did all the things other roosters do, including flying up to and down from the roost, breeding the girls, and scratching in the dirt. He could outrun me easily. He had no idea his feet were deformed. He never lost his toes...the ligaments contracted and they just curled up. Again, I'm not qualified to give you advice on how to treat your hen's blister, which does indeed look like very severe frostbite to me, but I figured any idea is sometimes better than none.





Edited to add: I think I'd recommend that you take a good look at your ventilation in the coop. I know we all tend to want to lock that thing down tight against winter's fury, but that can be the wrong thing to do. Without a way for humidity from waterers, droppings, and their respirations to get out of the coop, that humidity settles on their combs. They can also dip their wattles in the waterer and freeze them pretty badly. I don't know how water would get onto their combs, but if I've learned anything about chickens it's this - if they can find a way to get hurt on it, they'll do it.