Copied and pasted this from a sticky thread:
1) What type of bird , age and weight (does the chicken seem or feel lighter or thinner than the others.) chicken; 7 weeks; normal weight
2) What is the behavior, exactly. They were acting scared and alone (making the "homing" call) in their coop.
3) How long has the bird been exhibiting symptoms? Since this morning (not when the coop was opened about an hour after sunrise, but a little while after that).
4) Are other birds exhibiting the same symptoms? No, just the two chicks.
5) Is there any bleeding, injury, broken bones or other sign of trauma. no bleeding, yes injuries, no broken bones: each chick has had the skin at the back of her neck pecked open, one has a very small break in the skin and the feathers/fluff of her neck cover up the opening, the other has exposed muscle about the size of a nickle and there is a small peck mark where the muscle tissue looks broken smaller than a pea.
6) What happened, if anything that you know of, that may have caused the situation. Saw a cockerel (17 weeks old) pecking at something in the corner of the coop where the chicks have been living with some adult birds, but not his own coop; thought it was feed, but apparently it was these two young pullets.
7) What has the bird been eating and drinking, if at all. They seem to be eating and drinking normally. They have been allowed to free range and forage, they have access to medicated chick crumbles and fresh clean water in several locations around the yard.
8) How does the poop look? Normal? Bloody? Runny? etc. N/A
9) What has been the treatment you have administered so far? Currently, I have them in a brooder in the living room; they have medicated chick crumbles and tetracyclene (sp) water.
ETA: Also, I wanted to add that right when I found them, I put clean water on the wounds to clean them a little (again, I didn't want to cause more damage) and I applied a coconut ointment w/ lavender, lilac, burgamot, and ylang ylang in it (the lavender and burgamot have cleansing properties and the coconut oil is soothing and healing to the skin, and I thought it would help moisturize the muscle while the skin is healing up.
10 ) What is your intent as far as treatment? For example, do you want to treat completely yourself, or do you need help in stabilizing the bird til you can get to a vet? My intention is to do what I can to save these girls. I have tried butterfly bandages (not enough bare skin to stick them to) and VetWrap (the one with the worse wound tried to back out of it, so I took that off). I was going to try to use super glue, but the tube I have is dried out and I can't get a new tube until next week.
11) If you have a picture of the wound or condition, please post it. It may help. I'll upload pics ASAP, but I needed to get this posted in the meantime.
12) Describe the housing/bedding in use They're in a plastic tote brooder in the house with pine shavings with a little DE mixed in and I have a heat lamp set up so they aren't stressed from being too cool. I'll post pics of my setup too.
Any and all help, advice, etc. would be greatly appreciated. =)
ETA: Pics as promised.
This is my setup. Lamp in the top left, water in the top right, feeder to the bottom, pine shavings with DE, and the two chicks.
Here's the first one. The dark spot in the middle there is dried blood. Tried to clean that off some, but didn't want to cause more damage.
This is the second one; the rest of the pics are of her, b/c she has much worse damage to her skin.
You can see the skin at the front of her neck is a little slack b/c of the gaping hole in it at the back of her neck.
Also, sorry about the ultra-bright lines, those are the wire of the top of the brooder.
This is a good picture of the one small peck mark in her neck muscle. It's not deep, the tissue was just torn a little and a little bit of blood came ot the surface. It doesn't look like that bled badly at all.
This is a good pic of the size of the hole compared to the rest of her; it's about the size of a nickel. You can see the feather/fluff matted with dried blood all around it.
Also, I wanted to add that right when I found them, I put clean water on the wounds to clean them a little (again, I didn't want to cause more damage) and I applied a coconut ointment w/ lavender, lilac, burgamot, and ylang ylang in it (the lavender and burgamot have cleansing properties and the coconut oil is soothing and healing to the skin, and I thought it would help moisturize the muscle while the skin is healing up.
I'll add this into the Q&A section above as well.
1) What type of bird , age and weight (does the chicken seem or feel lighter or thinner than the others.) chicken; 7 weeks; normal weight
2) What is the behavior, exactly. They were acting scared and alone (making the "homing" call) in their coop.
3) How long has the bird been exhibiting symptoms? Since this morning (not when the coop was opened about an hour after sunrise, but a little while after that).
4) Are other birds exhibiting the same symptoms? No, just the two chicks.
5) Is there any bleeding, injury, broken bones or other sign of trauma. no bleeding, yes injuries, no broken bones: each chick has had the skin at the back of her neck pecked open, one has a very small break in the skin and the feathers/fluff of her neck cover up the opening, the other has exposed muscle about the size of a nickle and there is a small peck mark where the muscle tissue looks broken smaller than a pea.
6) What happened, if anything that you know of, that may have caused the situation. Saw a cockerel (17 weeks old) pecking at something in the corner of the coop where the chicks have been living with some adult birds, but not his own coop; thought it was feed, but apparently it was these two young pullets.
7) What has the bird been eating and drinking, if at all. They seem to be eating and drinking normally. They have been allowed to free range and forage, they have access to medicated chick crumbles and fresh clean water in several locations around the yard.
8) How does the poop look? Normal? Bloody? Runny? etc. N/A
9) What has been the treatment you have administered so far? Currently, I have them in a brooder in the living room; they have medicated chick crumbles and tetracyclene (sp) water.
ETA: Also, I wanted to add that right when I found them, I put clean water on the wounds to clean them a little (again, I didn't want to cause more damage) and I applied a coconut ointment w/ lavender, lilac, burgamot, and ylang ylang in it (the lavender and burgamot have cleansing properties and the coconut oil is soothing and healing to the skin, and I thought it would help moisturize the muscle while the skin is healing up.
10 ) What is your intent as far as treatment? For example, do you want to treat completely yourself, or do you need help in stabilizing the bird til you can get to a vet? My intention is to do what I can to save these girls. I have tried butterfly bandages (not enough bare skin to stick them to) and VetWrap (the one with the worse wound tried to back out of it, so I took that off). I was going to try to use super glue, but the tube I have is dried out and I can't get a new tube until next week.
11) If you have a picture of the wound or condition, please post it. It may help. I'll upload pics ASAP, but I needed to get this posted in the meantime.
12) Describe the housing/bedding in use They're in a plastic tote brooder in the house with pine shavings with a little DE mixed in and I have a heat lamp set up so they aren't stressed from being too cool. I'll post pics of my setup too.
Any and all help, advice, etc. would be greatly appreciated. =)
ETA: Pics as promised.
You can see the skin at the front of her neck is a little slack b/c of the gaping hole in it at the back of her neck.
Also, sorry about the ultra-bright lines, those are the wire of the top of the brooder.
Also, I wanted to add that right when I found them, I put clean water on the wounds to clean them a little (again, I didn't want to cause more damage) and I applied a coconut ointment w/ lavender, lilac, burgamot, and ylang ylang in it (the lavender and burgamot have cleansing properties and the coconut oil is soothing and healing to the skin, and I thought it would help moisturize the muscle while the skin is healing up.
I'll add this into the Q&A section above as well.
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