Button quail head injury: Elizabethan collar?

[TheWeeBee]

One of my hens injured herself when she popped up and nailed a protruding corner at the top of her pen. Despite my cleaning the wound and applying some ointment, she keeps re-opening it by scratching at it. I have an e-collar that had previously been used on a injured budgie to keep her from chewing on an injured leg. I just put it on my quail and it fits perfectly. Has anyone else had to use these on injured fowl? The poor thing is very confused by having an opaque circle of blue xray film surrounding her neck!

 

[Glasshen]

Looks like a good solution. Can she eat with that on?

 

[TheWeeBee]

She seems to be beginning to get the hang of it. Luckily they have such long necks that they can really stretch out.

It's so hard with ground birds though, because their posture is so low to the ground, whereas parrots and budgies stand upright and make it easier to balance the weight (however slight) of the collar. I had to remove most of her bedding because she kept getting the lip of the collar caught and doing major faceplants I hate seeing her so stressed! She's such a sweetie-pie :>

I'm just so glad that I kept that original collar! I used pieces of surgical tape to line the inside edges of the collar so it doesn't dig into her skin, and secured the ends with a piece of Scotch tape.

I took the lid off of her pen (it's a 90 liter storage bin with the sides cut out and meshed over for good air flow) and saw dried blood from where she'd kept bashing her head. I used small strips of window insulation foam tape to cover any hard pieces of plastic that stuck out.