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.

 

[Eggcessive]

It doesn’t sound like the doxycycline has been doing much. It can treat mycoplasma (MG), but after 2 weeks you should have seen improvement. Was there any bad odor from the face? Did the vet think it was a respiratory disease or wound, or possibly a tumor? Good advice from azygous on cleaning. Maybe the vet could try a different antibiotic, such as bactrim (sulfa antibiotics.) Sometimes casportpony has recommended cutting out the pus mass, but vet might have a suggestion. Good luck on treating your chicken.

 

[LaurenQ]

thanks both, the lump was much smaller when i first took her to the vet and after palpating the area the vet thought her sinus was full. she also had slight bubbling to the eye so suspected mycoplasma but she's had no respiratory symptoms at all and the lump has only got bigger. when i cut into the end yellow liquid burst out but no real odour to it but definitely looks like an abscess. it kept resealing and filling up again even by the end of the day but since i start using the syringe to flush the hole its stayed open and no fluid now just hard. i scraped some hard yellow pus out but didnt want to dig too much due to its location near the eye and sinus. she still has nothing coming out her actual nose and mouth and throat are clear. i'm reluctant to take her back to the vet tbh as drugs werent helpful and it was ridiculously expensive for a chicken ( consultation charge was more than i pay for the horses) just read alot about such wounds not healing unless the hardened waxy pus is removed fully so jist wanting to know if thats what i should aim for (carefully of course)

 

[Eggcessive]

Usually the pus needed to be removed for antibiotics to help. Tylosin powder in the water is also good to treat MG and sinus infections. Sulfa antibiotics or tylosin can be found online. Here is a link for tylosin:
https://thecanaryfinchstore.com/product/tylosin-powder-for-birds/
And another for sulfa antibiotic:
https://birdpalproducts.com/product...4rHGST0QSBh63yXBTvowt9mHEvHplcNnzLzj1xZEchyNo

 

[LaurenQ]

great thank you for all your advice. i'll look to get some ordered and and carry on with cleaning it daily