Black Scaly spots on Beak - what could this be?

[MadHatcher]

Worst vet visit ever... he was very rough with my guy!

He literally walked in, shook my hand, took one look at Baba Yaga standing calmly on the table and pinned him to the table with one hand and grabbed his head with the other. It was horrible!
I stepped in and held Baba more gently and allowed the procedure to continue. During which the "doctor" broke up the wooden stem of a swab and tried to use the sharp splintered end to dig around in his nose... until he realized that it wasn't working and I was ready to take my bird away from him!

This is my PET we're talking about here. I hatched this little one from an egg. Anyway...

Rough treatment aside they took a skin scraping and didn't see any mites. They also did a swab stain and that tested negative for bacteria and fungus.

The rough vet wanted me to let him take blood from my poor battered roo to check to see if it is his liver failing.

He also said it might just be staining from something in his environment.

MY thoughts on the matter:

1. I was not going to let this "doctor" near my bird again after the what I'm tempted to call assault. I very highly doubt he would be allowed to treat people's cats and dogs in this manner... imagine him using the splintered end of a wooden stick in your puppy's nose! So... he wasn't going to draw blood to test for liver function.

2. I don't think the beak is just stained. When the vet scraped away the dark flaky part of the beak it came away and flaked off onto the slide (which is how he looked for mites) but it left his beak underneath looking jagged... like the little chunks of dark colored flakes used to be smooth healthy beak tissue but had since died for some reason.


I've got another appointment for Tuesday with a different animal clinic.

I'm really hoping to have a better experience.

 

[Silver Spring Waterfowl]

That's great! You're very lucky! Hopefully he'll fix you right up once he knows what's going on. Fingers crossed for you!

 

[Silver Spring Waterfowl]

Oh, my! How awful! I am so sorry you had to go through that! Hope the next one is better! PM me if you feel you've wound up on your own with this. There will have to be skin samples and bloodwork. There's no other way to diagnose. I'm still betting it's fungal and easily taken care of.

 

[Silver Spring Waterfowl]

Had any luck? Hope you've got it figured out!
Kathy

 

[MadHatcher]

Not yet. He has the second vet appointment tomorrow at 5pm. I'm waiting to hear some good news like "you're just overreacting"

But... it is definitely spreading on his little beak. It doesn't seem to bother him AT ALL... which I do find comforting.

I'll keep you updated - thank you for helping!

 

[Peppypap]

Poor baby!! I wouldn't take any of my hens back. Why would he use the sharp end in the nose? Hope it's just some sort of easy to cure thing!

 

[MadHatcher]

I totally agree - none of my chickens are ever going back to that vet's office.

Thank you for the support. I too hope it is an easy fix. I love my rooster and chickens so much! <3 I have the vet bills to prove it - haha

 

[Silver Spring Waterfowl]

They have to scrape some of the tissue for a culture, even inside the nostrils. No two ways about it. Even if it's a fungal infection (which it sounds more and more like), they have to know what kind so they know how to treat it. IF you get a bunch of head scratching and "I dunnos", you might try some bleach, 50%, on a Qtip, clean the whole area as well as you can (probably a 2 person job), then use some athlete's foot cream on it every day. The bleach will kill the surface stuff, but don't use it every day. Just to give it the initial jump start.

We use a product called GSE (grapefruit seed extract) in the drinking water and in the wading pools. This is that "bleach alternative" that is in so many household antibacterials. It doesn't take much and it's supposed to be good for internal parasites and disnfectant and a mold inhibitor. That's what we soaked Speckles in every day, that and some epsom salts. We used a homemade cream on the wounds. Understand that at the time, we thought we were dealing with some type of severe burn. That's why we didn't use an anti-fungal cream. This stuff I made works very well for any type of minor wound or irritation, except in the eyes. GSE is available at health products websites. I get mine from Vitacost.com.

We also spray down the yard, especially in hot humid weather with horticultural neem oil every 3 weeks. It's an excellent organic anti-fungal. Mercifully, we haven't had a recurrance since. Aspergillis flava is the best guess the vet at the state diagnostic lab could offer. We couldn't do the skin scrapes because we had already started a treatment and it was making marked improvement. It wouldn't have done any good. SO, even if you are told it's a fungus and given treatment, there's how we've treated the area to prevent recurrance. Many types of fungus are present everywhere. Sometimes conditions just make it blossom. Good luck at the vet.

 

[tinychicky]

good luck!

 

[MadHatcher]

The second vet clinic was a much better experience.

They had an interning vet technician come into the room with us first thing. When we let Baba Yaga out of the carrier he sat calmly on the table looking around at all of us - like usual. The vet tech was very calm and spoke softly to Baba before placing his hands on his sides and gently stroking him - getting him used to his touch. Then after a few minutes of petting, talking, and looking at him when the doctor finally came in Baba was practically falling asleep on the table he was so relaxed!

I asked the doctor about the sharp splintered stick and he said that he understood how upsetting that must have looked in conjunction with the other doctor's rough treatment of my guy but that "back in the day" that was how they used to do it. He said now though they tend to examine the nares with a dental pipe cleaner much like the ones used to clean between braces. He showed me the instrument and I felt much better about it and him in general. I told him that I understood that sometimes animals need to be restrained in order for the procedures to be carried out but that I did think the previous doctor's treatment of Baba was uncalled for - within a minute of stepping into the room the poor guy was literally pinned to the table with one hand and his head was being grabbed. Also, that the other vet didn't look under his wings or in-between his feathers for lice/mites. He didn't even listen to his heartbeat.

Thankfully the doctor yesterday did all of that! Which made me feel lots better.

The doctor said it looked like a fungal infection to him and gave me a bottle of anti-fungal lotion to rub into his beak. On top of all of it this vet visit even with the medicine was cheaper!

So I'm going to rub his beak, comb and such with the lotion twice daily. I think I'm going to do it to everyone in the flock that has anything remotely strange looking on them as well - since Baba is the only light colored bird it would be difficult to see on anyone else.

I have a recheck in two weeks to determine if the growth of the fungus has slowed down but the vet said it might be months before the beak is totally back to normal. He said he didn't want to get into a huge diagnostic routine until we were sure it wasn't fungal.

I already use neem on the garden during the summer months (which is most of the year in Florida) so it wouldn't be much more difficult to spray the rest of the yard down.

Thank for you all of your helpful suggestions! I super appreciate it.

Hopefully, we'll have this in hand now and can work on preventing it from occurring again.