Chicken bad infection

[k9plucker]

Hi there

I have this female and she lost the feathers on her back due to the cockerel mounting her too much(I guess)

I gave it too my friend so she could recover as he has a big coup and just one male to 10 hens.

Turns out the area got infected and the bald patch is now a really bad open sore and has extended down the chickens sides

She looks to have lost a bit of weight. She is eating and drinking water.

I have her back in my place now and want to treat her with some anti bacterial

I would think of using Iodine solution but that just my guess

What would any of your guys think the problem is?

Would there be any course of action you would advice me to take?

Any body want to ask me more about her condition?

I can post a photo up if that would be more helpful

 

[GranmaEm]

That does sound like an infection. It may heal with treatment on the surface only, but I would use a dressing with antibiotic and that also keeps the surface moist. Tissue heals best that way. Neosporin or triple antibiotic ointment works well and I have used Intrasite gel ( in the UK) to get a large raw area to heal very well without a thick scar.

If the sore doesn't look a lot better after the first couple of days with twice/three times daily ointment I would use an oral antibiotic. A combination of Amoxycillin and Clavulanic acid works very well for these superficial infections.

 

[k9plucker]

Thanks very much

Information appreciated

 

[k9plucker]

Just checking if anybody else would have some advice for me.

I would prefer to use natural methods of medication if possible

 

[GranmaEm]

Just checking if anybody else would have some advice for me.

I would prefer to use natural methods of medication if possible

Trickier with a chronic infection rather than a fresh wound. I know others have had success with honey dressings, but they would be in a better position to advise. I read it in one of the threads on here:- perhaps a search would get you the right type/frequency etc.

 

[chooks4life]

Quote: Raw garlic, minced or crushed, a whole clove or more, given daily in feed is a great antibiotic and the high sulfur speeds healing. Depending on what the wound looks like, I would use one or a few of several things, possibly in conjunction. Photos are always helpful, sometimes people forget to mention a symptom that's crucial, or just don't know what it is. If it's just open, exposing flesh, I'd use Lucas's pawpaw ointment and maybe a coat of vaseline on top of that to protect the pawpaw from being rubbed off, eaten, and drying too quickly. If it's crusted or otherwise infected and messy Stockholm tar is great, it kills even golden staph and gangrene as well as pain, and heals rapidly. I don't know where you are but Americans don't seem to be familiar with these products and I'm in Australia so I can't really help with that.

There was a famous herbal medicine information gatherer and tester who went head to head with doctors and scientists and veterinarians regularly and came out on top; she ended up treating a lot of their animals, lol. Her name was Juliette de Bairacli Levy. I've followed her teachings and found her information quite valuable and true, and lifesaving for me and my pets and livestock, so many times I've lost count. I highly recommend you get her books, including 'The Complete Herbal Handbook For Farm And Stable.' In that one she recommends using just rosemary brew to wash even the worst wounds, as the sole treatment. She mentions using it on her dogs for wounds you could insert a whole hand into, and not stitching them either. Best wishes.

 

[cywiar merch]

Just checking if anybody else would have some advice for me.

I would prefer to use natural methods of medication if possible

Would be useful to post this on the Natural Chicken keeping thread. Lots of experienced people there in natural methods that I am sure would be able to help.

 

[k9plucker]

Hi everyone, thanks for your help

My hen is getting better now but hard a hard time recently

Basically, the hen was being picked on by the other chickens in my friends house.
I put her there to recover and she ended up in worse form. The open sore on her sides were due to being pecked.
I never consider this side of the chicken nature but it makes more sense to me now.

The initial reason why she was loosing feathers was due to my rooster tormenting her and I found out she also had a load of yellowish fleas living of her.

When I brought her to my house I left her in the shed and the rooster managed to get into her and beat her real bad. Think he was trying to kill her.
So she incurred more injuries and now has a hole in her side and a damaged leg.

I started to treat the fleas with neem oil and I have found that all are dead now after 4 days. Also the sores on each side of her breast are healing good. I'm using a honey, neem oil, aloe vera gel mix to treat the sores. She has a hole on one side from the rooster which looks pretty bad but I think it'll recover using this mix to keep it moist and hopefully heal it. I'm also spraying her with a rosemary infusion daily also to heal the cuts. I also cut away some feathers on her rump and wings so I can see the infections and cuts and deal with the successfully.

That's the story. Though it be good to update any one who had advice or read my thread.

Cheers, any further advice will be appreciated

On a good note the chicken is getting stronger every day and is not down and out any more. And my road island red has given her first few eggs this week. Happy out.

 

[chooks4life]

Thanks for the update. Hope she continues to get better and better.

I've got an opinion to offer on your rooster, but please don't take it as an attack on you or whoever bred him, since it is in fact an opinion on the intensive cage-breeding industry rather than anybody else. People do what they believe is best or harmless but all too often we fail to see the warning signs of potential for harm. It takes a few generations to solidly cement a bad behavioural trait into an animal, but for example with one rooster who has turned violent, a percentage of his offspring will be violent too, before it is even a trait you can count on his particular genetic strain of descendants as possessing. (Inheriting/passing on etc).

If it were my rooster who had harmed a hen deliberately I would cull him. I don't accept that behaviour, it is not natural. Contrary to popular belief, in the wild they are more likely to drive an injured or sick bird away than to try to kill it. It makes no sense to potentially catch its illness by drawing its blood, nor to waste valuable energy to destroy an animal that will fall to predators soon anyway. It makes sense to be as far away as possible from that bird. If chooks culled every other sick or hurt chook they found they too would fall to the predators. The same is true for roosters being excessively violent with eachother; as with the vast majority of males of all species, a lot of ritual body language exists and is employed to avoid any serious expenditure of energy, and fights that draw blood or cause injury are uncommon. Fights to the death are rare. People excuse violent chook behaviour on it being 'natural' or 'how it is in the wild' when in fact it is not natural, it's how it is when you cage and incorrectly feed and improperly socialize and interfere with in every possible way and then breed on the damaged chooks that result. The behaviours you described are normal now, but not natural. They can be bred out, and should be. But that involves culling aberrant, violent individuals.

We have taken birds from their natural environment and restricted them physically and nutritionally, and bred from the damaged, mentally aberrant offspring that resulted from that situation. That's where the common traits of violence emerge; they are not natural in the wild. Roosters in the wild never harm hens. It is mankind's fault chooks ever came to view eachother as food or roosters ever became violent to hens. Chick-on-chick cannibalism is one of the horrible examples of what happens when people think you can raise an animal in utterly abnormal circumstances on a totally artificial diet.

No matter how special a rooster's genes are or how pretty he is, once he hurts a hen, he's economically invalidated himself. The same is true of baby killing hens. Or cannibalistic chicks, or violent adults. For the sake of every other living animal that shares the same address, I cull violent individuals, and the remaining ones breed calm and kind chooks. You may not know this, but it is actually not uncommon for a chook's reaction to another chook being hurt or sick to be cuddling up to it and putting a wing over it. Once intensively caged for a few generations chooks are demented enough to prefer to kill than cuddle.

 

[pammy63]

can you give me the ratio you use for the infection. I have a young chick that has been limping on his/her left foot. I have been looking at it and it seems that it might have either scratched it on something sharp or stepped on a nail or something. it is somewhat swollen and sore to the touch. need advice!!