LynnTXchickenmom
Chirping
- Aug 22, 2022
- 36
- 38
- 56
New chicken owner here. 1 chick confirmed dead, 1 chick missing, 1 chick injured from dogs yesterday. 18 remaining in the flock. Chicks dug a hole under our wood fence, got stuck in space between that and my neighbors’ chain link fence, and their dogs got the chickens through the bottom of the chain link.
The injured one: 8 week old chick—half her skull scalped and part crushed. We didn’t discover her until last night, sitting quiet and still between the fences. She’s alive but not moving around as injured chickens do. We cleaned her wound with Dakin’s solution; there’s some bone fragments and brain tissue exposed. We put her in the brooder in the house w/ water and feed. She won’t eat or drink on her own, but if I put her beak in a small stream of water from the faucet, she’ll drink a little.
Questions: Should I continue with the water every few hours? Obviously we don’t want her to die of dehydration, and she’s not drinking on her own.
I’m going to buy antibiotic ointment to put on it for now until Bluekote arrives from Amazon. We ran out.
Isolation: It’s too hot to put this plastic-bin brooder with wire lid out in the run so she’s still with her flock. Highs are still 97-100 here. Inside is better. So that raises the issue of reintegration with the flock if she survives. Any ideas on that? I can get a wire dog crate, but I’m thinking the heat is too much for her injured like this. How long a separation means trouble with reintegration?
We consider the chickens livestock, not pets, so I’m mainly saving her to avoid loss of money. I’m hoping she’ll live and grow up to lay. If she’s too damaged to lay, we’ll cull her and stew her. Is this a fool’s errand? Should we euthanize her now? Not sure since her brain tissue has been injured. She is opening her eye on the injured side. The ear is likely harmed; hard to tell with the mess that I’m not confident about so we only picked out the debris and rinsed it w/ Dakin’s solution.
Thanks! A chicken wire apron has now been installed all along the fence line—I worked on it until late in the night. Good thing I still have landscape staples to keep it in the ground. They scratched and moved the apron I had shoved partly under the fence but without stapling it. Live and learn.
The injured one: 8 week old chick—half her skull scalped and part crushed. We didn’t discover her until last night, sitting quiet and still between the fences. She’s alive but not moving around as injured chickens do. We cleaned her wound with Dakin’s solution; there’s some bone fragments and brain tissue exposed. We put her in the brooder in the house w/ water and feed. She won’t eat or drink on her own, but if I put her beak in a small stream of water from the faucet, she’ll drink a little.
Questions: Should I continue with the water every few hours? Obviously we don’t want her to die of dehydration, and she’s not drinking on her own.
I’m going to buy antibiotic ointment to put on it for now until Bluekote arrives from Amazon. We ran out.
Isolation: It’s too hot to put this plastic-bin brooder with wire lid out in the run so she’s still with her flock. Highs are still 97-100 here. Inside is better. So that raises the issue of reintegration with the flock if she survives. Any ideas on that? I can get a wire dog crate, but I’m thinking the heat is too much for her injured like this. How long a separation means trouble with reintegration?
We consider the chickens livestock, not pets, so I’m mainly saving her to avoid loss of money. I’m hoping she’ll live and grow up to lay. If she’s too damaged to lay, we’ll cull her and stew her. Is this a fool’s errand? Should we euthanize her now? Not sure since her brain tissue has been injured. She is opening her eye on the injured side. The ear is likely harmed; hard to tell with the mess that I’m not confident about so we only picked out the debris and rinsed it w/ Dakin’s solution.
Thanks! A chicken wire apron has now been installed all along the fence line—I worked on it until late in the night. Good thing I still have landscape staples to keep it in the ground. They scratched and moved the apron I had shoved partly under the fence but without stapling it. Live and learn.
