chicken abscess on face please help!

[LaurenQ]

Hi Everyone,
I'm looking for some advice for my 1 year old Pekin hen Betty. she's part of a trio and recently i noticed one side of her face swelling. as it didnt improve i took her to the vet and they prescribed 21 day course of karidox as well as metacam. its grown considerably over the 2 weeks she's been taking the meds so i took it they werent working. it started to resemble a boil so i took a sterilised blade and nicked the end and fountain of watery pus came out. did it again for 3 days straight and flushed it with a syringe of leucillan antispectic spray and her eye has actually opened up now and skin doesnt look so red and angry. no longer filling up but i'm aware there is probaby hard pus in there. i scooped a fair bit out today and re flushed it. just wondering what else i should do, or does it need full on scraping out. she's fine in herself eating and drinking etc. she just looks a mess. tbh popping it and flushing it seems to have made more improvement than the meds. still got a week of them left to take so will finish the course
@everyone

 

[azygous]

You're definitely on the right track cleaning out the pus. I'm surprised your vet didn't clean it out as pus harbors bacteria. It's like calling the cops on burglars in your house and the cops just leaving the criminals inside to keep doing their worst.

Keep up with the meds, but try to clean out all the solid pus that you're able. The face is a very difficult spot to treat, but a hot compress (hot but not to the point it burns tissue) after you clean out the pus will help to kill the rest of the bacteria.

There likely is a foreign object embedded in the wound to have caused this. Scraping out the pus will hopefully get it.