Baby quail with Neck/Back bubble!!!

[moonpearl]

. This showed up in the eight hours I was at work! Birds are completely foreign to me please help! Pip is only a week or two old, I found him three or four days ago. Last night I noticed he had pasty butt, so I soaked him in warm water being careful to keep it below chest deep, and cleaned him up. I came home from work and cleaned him up again, but then I noticed this blister! It starts where you can see it and goes all the way across the front of his tiny chest. What is this, how do I help him!?!

 

[moonpearl]

Please, anything, I'm so upset for my poor little feathered baby, I'm terrified to pop it.

 

[emmaie892000]

Here is the reference posted on the other thread you commented on.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/828000/subcutaneous-emphysema-pictures-added
If you press the bubble, does it feel fluid filled, air filled, or solid?

 

[moonpearl]

Thank you!!! It feels like air.

 

[moonpearl]

I read through the link. What happens if I poke it and it's not a ruptured air pocket thing?

 

[emmaie892000]

Well, if it's a solid tumor, it shouldn't hurt it.
If it's liquid filled, part of the treatment for those sorts of things is usually drainage as well. As long as you don't jab it super deep, nothing should go wrong no matter what kind of bump it is.

 

[BlackRabbit92]

I have discovered this very same thing on my 2 week old baby king quail. I can see through the skin and when I move it around i can see it is full with what looks like light yellow/cream fluid/ puss. I am going to attempt to prick the lump with a sterile needle and drain it. I will update on the end result with images.

 

[BlackRabbit92]

So after about 20 hours of monitoring I have noticed the large lump on my quail chicks neck enlarge and go down twice. After further research I believe this is the crop and its purpose is to store the food before entering the stomach. Looking more closely the baby chicks crop is actually full of all the crushed pallets liquified before going into its stomach.I can see pockets of air as well and will keep monitoring.

 

[Wyorp Rock]

So after about 20 hours of monitoring I have noticed the large lump on my quail chicks neck enlarge and go down twice. After further research I believe this is the crop and its purpose is to store the food before entering the stomach. Looking more closely the baby chicks crop is actually full of all the crushed pallets liquified before going into its stomach.I can see pockets of air as well and will keep monitoring.

Welcome To BYC

If it's going down, then likely the crop and not a ruptured air sac.

In tiny chicks, often a full crop can look quite large. She'll grow quickly over the next couple of weeks, start to feather in and then you won't notice it that much.

 

[Aussie Shane]

We have been seeing this gas sac appear near the base of the neck-chest on our juvenile and adult Coturnix quail. They can go a whole week with it before invariably dying. I did a post-mortem on one and discovered the sac had decomposing feed in it and the gas was from the decomposition. Going deeper, I saw that the oesophagus above the crop had ruptured and feed had been forced out through the chest wall under the skin. I cannot find anything about this online or from my network. My guess is that an ulcerative infection in the oesophagus causes this. As we have a settled group of hens with one male in each coop, feed with clean pellets twice daily, have hardware cloth floors 1/2" square, water feeders are cleaned and refilled twice-daily and coops are hosed out every second day there is only one stand-out potential source of infection... the sand tray. The quail LOVE their sand trays and clearly ingest sand as they 'bath'. Of course it is quickly laden with their poop... We could be overfeeding, backing up the crop, allowing infected sand to sit in the lower oesophagus... What does anyone else think?