Hi everyone. It's been a long couple of days. Some time early Thursday morning some foxes, coyotes or feral dogs jumped our 4 foot fence at our home in Chicago, broke open our coop and attacked our ducks. Four were killed and two survived but were badly injured.
Damage to the side of the coop
Paw prints in the alley
The canines came down our alley after the snow had finished falling, so I was able to follow their tracks down the alley and find where they jumped over our fence. It looked as though there were two of them and they were sniffing the garbage cans along the alley, then got to our house and heard or smelled the ducks and explored our back fence line in the alley until they could find a good place to jump the fence. They broke through the wood slats on the coop on one side, and chewed on the locked access panel on the other side. We have motion lights throughout our yard, a solid-wood coop on stilts, a dog that hears everything, and our bedroom is less than 30' from our coop and still these fast, mean, quiet f*@#*$s got our ducks
I won't go into details about what we found in the morning, except that most (not all) of the injuries consisted of puncture wound(s) on the back between the wings and deep lacerations to the upper breast.
When we brought in our two survivors, we put them in a warm bath and then irrigated the wounds with home-made sterile saline applied with a baby medicine syringe. After the bath, we put them on clean towels in the tub. We've kept the wounds open and clean applied some neosporin.
They have been getting a warm bath each day, and we have the heat turned up in the bathroom. They have access to clean drinking water with a dissolved vitamin/electrolyte supplement and Aureomycin (antibiotic) powder.
They are drinking, defecating and breathing without difficulty. On Saturday they started eating again (thank goodness!!). They are getting mashed potatoes with peas, hard-boiled eggs and a couple of other good things mixed in. The surviving drake can walk and swim and move around well, but the surviving duck is not as mobile--she can move both legs and wings, she can swim, but she is favoring her injured side a lot and not walking much. They seem to be doing better than on Thursday. All bleeding has stopped (stopped on Thursday morning after I irrigated the wounds). They seem strong but I know we are not out of the woods for infection, etc.
OK. So here are my questions:
1) Should I cut the feathers back so I can see the wounds better? Or should I leave well enough alone unless I see/smell something bad?
2) How should I go about trimming back the feathers if I need to?
3) I've read pros and cons about closing wounds, and I've heard that closing bite wounds is not recommended. There's no bleeding, they are in a fairly clean environment, should I just leave the wounds open to avoid abscesses?
4) Is there any change I should make to their treatment?
5) Anything else I should watch for?
TIA!
Damage to the side of the coop
Paw prints in the alley
The canines came down our alley after the snow had finished falling, so I was able to follow their tracks down the alley and find where they jumped over our fence. It looked as though there were two of them and they were sniffing the garbage cans along the alley, then got to our house and heard or smelled the ducks and explored our back fence line in the alley until they could find a good place to jump the fence. They broke through the wood slats on the coop on one side, and chewed on the locked access panel on the other side. We have motion lights throughout our yard, a solid-wood coop on stilts, a dog that hears everything, and our bedroom is less than 30' from our coop and still these fast, mean, quiet f*@#*$s got our ducks
I won't go into details about what we found in the morning, except that most (not all) of the injuries consisted of puncture wound(s) on the back between the wings and deep lacerations to the upper breast.
When we brought in our two survivors, we put them in a warm bath and then irrigated the wounds with home-made sterile saline applied with a baby medicine syringe. After the bath, we put them on clean towels in the tub. We've kept the wounds open and clean applied some neosporin.
They have been getting a warm bath each day, and we have the heat turned up in the bathroom. They have access to clean drinking water with a dissolved vitamin/electrolyte supplement and Aureomycin (antibiotic) powder.
They are drinking, defecating and breathing without difficulty. On Saturday they started eating again (thank goodness!!). They are getting mashed potatoes with peas, hard-boiled eggs and a couple of other good things mixed in. The surviving drake can walk and swim and move around well, but the surviving duck is not as mobile--she can move both legs and wings, she can swim, but she is favoring her injured side a lot and not walking much. They seem to be doing better than on Thursday. All bleeding has stopped (stopped on Thursday morning after I irrigated the wounds). They seem strong but I know we are not out of the woods for infection, etc.
OK. So here are my questions:
1) Should I cut the feathers back so I can see the wounds better? Or should I leave well enough alone unless I see/smell something bad?
2) How should I go about trimming back the feathers if I need to?
3) I've read pros and cons about closing wounds, and I've heard that closing bite wounds is not recommended. There's no bleeding, they are in a fairly clean environment, should I just leave the wounds open to avoid abscesses?
4) Is there any change I should make to their treatment?
5) Anything else I should watch for?
TIA!
