Can Chickens Get Water in Their Ears?

[Urchin]

I realize this is an odd question, but since I'm puzzled, I'm asking it anyway. Ok, on to the background. We have a silkie hen, Ella, who's about sixteen months old now. She's an indoor chicken who lives with the two grown chicks she hatched, both hens. The day before yesterday my fourteen-year-old son gave her a bath because she's very good at wetting her crest when she drinks, then dragging it through the wood chips and dirt in their pen as she scratches around foraging. Yesterday morning she was fine. I know because we had to take shelter because of a tornado warning and I was the one chasing the chickens around so I could stuff them in their carrier and take them downstairs with the kids. In the afternoon, my youngest brings it to my attention that Ella is walking funny. And walking funny she was. She was stumbling around like a drunk and occasionally falling. Otherwise she was alert and normal, trying her best to keep scratching in the wood chips. Her legs were not paralyzed. When I picked her up, she did a little pedaling-like movement and could grasp my finger when I pressed it to the bottom of her foot.

I must add Ella is a research chicken. It's a long story, but she swallowed a nail, developed hardware disease and needed vet care. We have a veterinary hospital nearby who eventually got the nail out of her after it kept evading them. Their exotics vet, who cared for Ella, is writing a paper on this because techniques she used to get that nail out had never been published in regards to domestic fowl. That meant we got a lot of vet care for free, but in the interest of tracking Ella's progress, I have to run her up to the hospital (sixty miles) once a month for the summer. But it means I know an obscene amount of information on this chicken's health, like she doesn't have Marek's. When they do blood work, they check for everything, but it's their dime paying for the tests.

So, I go the vitamin deficiency route and give her a few drops of Poly-Vi-Sol yesterday. This morning she could walk just fine, her running was a little clumsy, but she wasn't stumbling all over herself. This afternoon I checked on her again and she was completely fine. It was like nothing had happened. But she did have a clear, wet trail running down her head from her left ear. I checked both ears and there was no ear infection-like discharge, just a little more clear liquid at the edge of the left one that I cleaned up with a Q-Tip. I am keeping an eye out for ear discharge or more wobbly walking just in case she does have an ear infection.

Do vitamins work that quickly or is it possible a little water from her bath managed to get around the skin covering her ear hole and cause some temporary equilibrium issues?

 

[Malibu99]

I have a Light Brahma named Ella! it's a great chicken name.

I believe vitamins would work that quick, and I'm going to go do some research on the equilibrium of chickens.

Eta- I cannot find anything on chickens wig equilibrium issues. I would think that it was the vitamins, as that's what the symptoms sounded like to me.

 

[Urchin]

Her full name is Mozarella.

We have a lot of cheese chickens, but that's what I get for letting the kids name them.


Thanks for the information. I'll assume that the liquid I found on the side of her head was some water from drinking then shaking her head. I guess it's back to trying to figure out what caused her vitamin deficiency. She just started laying again, so I wonder if between healing from major surgery and that, it took a toll on her nutritional reserves. Something to discuss with the vet when I drive her back up to the university later this month.