I couldn’t figure out how to edit the post, but I just wanted to tell you guys that I got her drinking today!! She apparently didn’t have the right water for her delicate chicken sensibilities. I made her just some plain water and that did the trick. Thank goodness because I was getting worried. She’s also eating.. not much, but I’ll take something over nothing. She seems to only want sunflower seeds. She’s didn’t poop at all yesterday which worried me.. but she pooped after she drank a bunch of water! I’ve also convinced her to take the low dose aspirin you guy recommended. I struggle to believe aspirin is enough pain relief for getting your neck ripped off.. but hopefully chickens metabolize aspirin differently and it actually works. She’s very definitely in pain. She refuses to stretch her neck out so we can slather it up.. have to carefully work around her resistance. We’re rotating between petroleum jelly and the triple antibiotic trying to keep it moist. Still haven’t gotten the feathers off, but I haven’t tried the dawn yet.. I was waiting for her to start eating and drinking again before messing with her too much. Hopefully today we can get those off so the healing can truly begin…. She’s gonna hate me. Thank you for all your advice guys! Hopefully she keeps improving.. between little chicken naps, some of her sass is back so I’m optimisticHello! So, a little background.. we went outside today to try and catch the rooster. We were going to put Vaseline on his huge wattles. And we notice one of our ISA Browns is holding her head kinda funny and her neck looks wet. I pick her up to investigate (and she let me which was the first red flag) and it’s not wet.. it’s hard.. almost like glue. She’s bald on the back of her neck and has a ton of feather stuck in this hard substance holding her head close to her body. We bring her inside and put her in the tub.. I start gently trying to loosen the feathers with warm water while we try to figure out what it could possibly have been. We can’t come up with anything and the feathers aren’t loosening. I try some oil next and send my husband into the yard to look for anything sticky or out of the ordinary. He comes back in fairly quickly with the entire back of her neck. Her feathers weren’t pulled out.. her skin was pulled off entirely. He says he found it right by the fence in the back of the yard. So now we’re thinking.. ok.. so something grabbed her and tried to pull her through the fence maybe? The geese or our rooster must have scared it off before it could pull her head completely off. Instead of trying to loosen the feathers.. I just start clipping them as carefully as I can.. just enough to free her head so she can eat and drink. We washed it with antibacterial/antimicrobial soap, put some peroxide on it, dabbed it dry gently, put some antibiotic ointment on it, and put her in the chicken hospital with some food and chicken electrolyte water. These are our first chickens. Is there anything else we can do? Anything we should be doing? What do we do tomorrow? We don’t currently have vet money. She’s not bleeding. It clearly hurts but she doesn’t appear lethargic. Im just not sure how to help her or how to proceed so any advice is most welcome. I don’t want to lose her and I want to make her recovery as pleasant for her as possible. I’ll attach some pictures of her neck before and after I freed it, the flesh, and our chicken hospital. Thanks in advance
@BigBlueHen53 @Lillith37 @azygous @Eggcessive
Hey guys! She’s doing alright. Eating and drinking. She even started laying eggs in her hospital room. We’ve had some super nice weather the past few days so we let her go outside. Initially she was separated for a day so they could hang out through a fence.. then with the ladies under supervision.. then we let her be. I have never seen a chicken so happy to take a dust bath
however! She’s been looking a little pale around her face? Her ears have been permanently pale. And her eye goes white on and off. We did treat everyone for mites recently.. she’s still eating and drinking. And the eggs, of course. So.. I’m not sure what it could be? She won’t touch vitamin water tho. Cuz she’s spoiled. She wants fresh sink water or dirty mud puddle water.. there’s no inbetween. I’ll attach some pictures of her color right. Her eye was totally white when we brought her inside to sleep.. it’s pinked up a little but it’s still pale. @BigBlueHen53
Uhhh… I’m in Iowa, USA. Im bad at geography
but her sisters aren’t pale. Same kind of chicken. ISA browns, that is. Maybe being inside kinda in the dark (not the dark dark, but she’s been in a wire dog kennel with a sheet over 3 sides of it.. like only the front of the cage is open. Helps hold all the hay in and I figured she might feel more secure that way) more than everyone else for a week messed her up?
Sorry, don't know the answers to those questions. You're getting great advice from @azygous and @Eggcessive, they're two of the most knowledgeable folks here on BYC.
