9 week old hen has large sores on back

Hello i just got my first chickens 6-8 weeks old from a local breeder. I was out changing their food and water this evening after work and noticed discoloration on the back of my rhode island white. I pushed her feathers apart and noticed a raised black crusty area on her back. It smelled like an abscess. I took her inside and used water to syringe/spray her down and remove the scabbing. I found a second sore above. The bottom store is round and raised and hard like it's attached to the bone. The too sore is looser and has some holes where festhers cam out when cleaning it. There is a bad odor. I applied a chlorhexidine gluconate antiseptic. Any ideas what is causing it??!

I'm responding partly to give some ideas and partly to follow to see if someone else has direct knowledge.

Since it smells bad, I think it is safe to say this is a bacterial infection likely from some sort of skin injury. E-Coli skin infections can occur in younger pullets, sometimes lingering from dirty hatching conditions or growing after a skin injury (hazing from another bird).

I don't think it is Marek's lesions (although about the right time for Marek's to appear) as Marek's doesn't smell bad. Not sure why the one seems so hard and attached to the bone, which is more like a tumor than abscess...but if the abscess was undetected for a long time, and has worked it's way deep, true pus is hard and cheesy, and it might be that.

Chlorexhidine is a good wash, but I would also put this bird on a good anti-biotic like Duramycin-10 (tetracyline) or Baytril.

Then watch to see if it improves.

This does look nasty, and seriously, if it were my bird, I'd probably cull it as I would not want whatever is infecting it to spread to my other birds. I'd definitely keep this one in isolation until you figure out what is going on.

LofMc

You can dab on some honey a few times a day when you clean the wound. Honey doesn't have side effects and kills even the most anti-bacterial resistant bacterias. It's used to nuke impossible to kill infections in hospitals these days. It works extremely well. I used it a few weeks ago after removing a wheat husk stuck fast in a chicken's eye socket. After I had pulled out the husk, I dabbed some straight onto the eye at about the same time she closed it. Didn't matter, she reacted for a second or two to say she felt something new was in her eye and then went quiet. I left it in without rinsing. The eye and the chicken have been 100 % ever since, with no side effects and no infection. I cannot recommend it enough, but a quick google for " honey resistant " will show what I mean as far as the science goes. It's the bacteria which are resistant to other things that are getting clobbered btw, nothing is resistant to honey itself.

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=honey+resistant

any honey will do, though cold extracted or raw honey or honeycomb is best. If you have too much money burning a hole in your pocket then manuka is as OK as any other honey too.

GodofPecking said:

You can dab on some honey a few times a day when you clean the wound. Honey doesn't have side effects and kills even the most anti-bacterial resistant bacterias. It's used to nuke impossible to kill infections in hospitals these days. It works extremely well. I used it a few weeks ago after removing a wheat husk stuck fast in a chicken's eye socket. After I had pulled out the husk, I dabbed some straight onto the eye at about the same time she closed it. Didn't matter, she reacted for a second or two to say she felt something new was in her eye and then went quiet. I left it in without rinsing. The eye and the chicken have been 100 % ever since, with no side effects and no infection. I cannot recommend it enough, but a quick google for " honey resistant " will show what I mean as far as the science goes. It's the bacteria which are resistant to other things that are getting clobbered btw, nothing is resistant to honey itself.

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=honey+resistant

any honey will do, though cold extracted or raw honey or honeycomb is best. If you have too much money burning a hole in your pocket then manuka is as OK as any other honey too.

Click to expand...

That is interesting, and I've heard that honey can kill bacteria, and I know that even straight sugar can help if you pour it into the wound.

I did do a search and found that there is wide variation in natural honey. The honey that the studies found effective was medical grade honey...honey derived from closely guarded bees in greenhouses. http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/46/11/1677.long

I also know that cheap "honey" often has a large percentage of corn syrup. It could be worth a try to find a good quality, pure honey, and pour it into the wound. May help.

LofMc

Lady of McCamley said:

That is interesting, and I've heard that honey can kill bacteria, and I know that even straight sugar can help if you pour it into the wound.

I did do a search and found that there is wide variation in natural honey. The honey that the studies found effective was medical grade honey...honey derived from closely guarded bees in greenhouses. http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/46/11/1677.long

I also know that cheap "honey" often has a large percentage of corn syrup. It could be worth a try to find a good quality, pure honey, and pour it into the wound. May help.

LofMc

Click to expand...

There is some variation in natural honey, however THEY ARE ALL antibacterial, or the bees would lose their crop. You said it yourself that sugar itself can kill bacteria, honey has a lot of sugars in it, of a special kind. It ALSO has the glucose enzymes which produce HYDROGEN PEROXIDE as a by product of their metabolism.

The idea that only particular honeys work is a product of ADVERTISING. Anything advertised is not worth buying. Golden rule. A particular study may limit it's findings to a particular honey because it was the only honey which the study looked at. HoneyBees can't live long in greenhouses, they are unable to requeen for example, and have been found to be completely unsuitable as greenhouse pollinators.

There is no honey sold anywhere which comes from bees kept in greenhouses.

Most over-advertised honeys come from NZ and it's tea-tree blossom honey known as manuka. It does nothing that other honeys don't also do. It just gets a lot more advertising and is breathtakingly overpriced as a result.

It is true that there are fake honeys out there. Find people who keep bees, buy honeycomb, or keep some bees yourself. It's incredibly rewarding and rather simple because the bees do the work. The job of the keeper is basically to give the bees a good home which is easy to defend against bugs and bees.

dab, don't pour, or you'll make a mess.

I will keep honey in mind for wounds. It does sound appealing.

LofMc