Chicken attacked by dog 8 days ago- confusion about administering PenG

[robomb]

I have no idea how this girl is still alive. I have been doing my best to care for her, but after looking over her entire body, I'm not sure I can adequately clean/treat her deep wounds. I read Nathalie Ross's article about treating wounds, and picked up the PenG today. I asked for a 3cc syringe, and when I got home, noticed it is a 100ml syringe. I tried googling a conversion from mL to cc, and it looks like it is the same?? But looking at 3cc's of medication, it seems like an enormous amount of medication to inject into a 6 lb hen. Can anyone point me in the direction to resolve this? I really want to get the antibiotic into her ASAP. Home today due to the blizzard yesterday - 26" of snow!

Planning to trim her feathers and attempt to more thoroughly clean her wounds today, but I am certain she will need the Penicillin injection to help her heal. Will try to take pics of the worst of the wounds - the ones I'm terrified to touch and clean.

 

[SunHwaKwon]

yes, mL's and cc's are the same.

For a 6# hen I believe it should be .6cc

.1 cc per pound

How did you come up with 3cc?

 

[SunHwaKwon]

https://sites.google.com/a/poultryp...oultry-podiatry#chickens_penicillin_injection

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/585188/chicken-penicillin-dosage

 

[robomb]

The bottle says 300,000 units per mL, and recommended dosage of 3,000 units per lb of body weight. Sorry been looking at so many references that my calculations are getting mixed up. The syringe is 6 mL's with 5 tick marks. I'm worried that 1 tick mark or 1/5th of a mL would be about 60,000 units which sounds like about 10 times too much. Am I over-analyzing this? Should I simply give her one tick mark or roughly 1/5th of an mL?

 

[robomb]

This is the syringe

 

[robomb]

Omg I finally figured it out. Not half as complicated as I was making it. Pull the plunger up to the 3rd tick, or .6 cc's. Sheesh the stress of this is making me lose my mind. Now I need to go clean her up.

 

[SunHwaKwon]

Omg I finally figured it out. Not half as complicated as I was making it. Pull the plunger up to the 3rd tick, or .6 cc's. Sheesh the stress of this is making me lose my mind. Now I need to go clean her up.

You are correct. It looks like each tick mark is .2 mL/cc so you go to the third one. Make sure you alternate breasts each time you administer it, and pull up to check for blood before pushing it in to make sure you haven't hit a vein.

 

[robomb]

Thank you for confirming. Somehow I managed to inject her, and she really squirmed when the meds went in (no blood in plunger). It's only me, so I wrapped a towel around her wings so she wouldn't hurt herself or knock the needle, etc. My hands were shaking like crazy after the injection.

I removed the wrap and looked at her wounds. So much better! I trimmed back the feathers too so they would stay out of the wound. The big black wound on her right flank area is caked with black stuff (dead tissue? Dried blood)? I cleaned it with povidine, put a bunch of neosporin in it, and loosely wrapped her with VetWrap again. Also dribbled some enhanced water over her mandibles. She's such a little trooper!

.

 

[SunHwaKwon]

Poor girl. it sounds like she is in good hands with someone who cares enough to try save her. Lucky her!

What gauge needle are you using?

 

[robomb]

The needles are 22 gauge, 3/4". I was so nervous! But I'm relieved that I could do it and hopefully this will give her an extra boost. Hopefully it will be easier tomoro. I believe I read that a minimum of 3 days up to maybe 5 is recommended? She never acted sick or infected, but I don't want to stop too early.