Not something I ever expected to have to do in my lifetime, but when you have chicken's for pets there is no telling what sort of weird trouble they will get themselves into...
It all started when Bunny, one of my sweet EE girls, was outside free ranging and I noticed something funny when she squatted to poo. Something just didn't look right and it seemed like she strained longer than normal. So I chased her down to take a look and was HORRIFIED to find that her vent was all nasty and infected. It was all crusted over with dried pus and poo and who knows what else and smelled like a dead animal. It was awful.
From what I could see, she had either had a prolapse that had gone un-noticed and become infected, or she had diarrhea or something like that which had caused the area to become raw and lead to infection. Either way the result was not pretty and I figured she was probably done for. She was also burning up with fever, poor thing.
I carefully removed as much of the necrotic tissue/scabs as I could and cleaned the area with diluted iodine. Then, I got out the tube of preparation H that I keep around for treating prolapses and went to put some of that on the area around her vent to try to reduce the swelling and some antibiotic ointment around the outside for infection. I was using a gloved finger to get the ointment just inside her vent and I discovered that she was packed chock full of hard fecal matter. It seemed that her injury had been allowing her to poo the liquid stuff out a bit but she wasn't able to pass most of the solids so she was all backed up. She kept straining to poo but nothing much was coming out.
So, I got out one of those ear bulb syringes that you use to clean out babies' noses and used it to squirt soapy water just inside the vent where all the poo was at (feeling like a weirdo the whole time) to see if it would make the poo come out. Sure enough it worked like a charm and out came a ton of nasty poo. I kept repeating until it seemed like pretty much all of what was stuck in there had been flushed out. Poor thing, I can't imagine it felt good to be carrying all that around and not be able to go!
Anyway, after everything was cleaned up and freshly covered in ointment, I gave her a shot of Tylan (only antibiotic I had on hand) and let her go back outside with my fingers crossed. She had been eating and drinking normally and nobody has been hassling her so I figured she was better off out with her friends.
The next two days I rounded her up to clean the wound, give her another shot of antibiotics, and reapply the ointment. The difference was amazing even on the first day. No need to repeat the enema, she is pooing just fine now and her vent looks 100 times better. No more nasty infection, just clean healing tissue. Her fever feels like it was gone today, too, though I will give her a full 5 day course of the Tylan just in case.
I can't believe she is healing this fast when I had pretty much figured her for a gonner. Man, chickens are amazing animals!
It all started when Bunny, one of my sweet EE girls, was outside free ranging and I noticed something funny when she squatted to poo. Something just didn't look right and it seemed like she strained longer than normal. So I chased her down to take a look and was HORRIFIED to find that her vent was all nasty and infected. It was all crusted over with dried pus and poo and who knows what else and smelled like a dead animal. It was awful.
From what I could see, she had either had a prolapse that had gone un-noticed and become infected, or she had diarrhea or something like that which had caused the area to become raw and lead to infection. Either way the result was not pretty and I figured she was probably done for. She was also burning up with fever, poor thing.
I carefully removed as much of the necrotic tissue/scabs as I could and cleaned the area with diluted iodine. Then, I got out the tube of preparation H that I keep around for treating prolapses and went to put some of that on the area around her vent to try to reduce the swelling and some antibiotic ointment around the outside for infection. I was using a gloved finger to get the ointment just inside her vent and I discovered that she was packed chock full of hard fecal matter. It seemed that her injury had been allowing her to poo the liquid stuff out a bit but she wasn't able to pass most of the solids so she was all backed up. She kept straining to poo but nothing much was coming out.
So, I got out one of those ear bulb syringes that you use to clean out babies' noses and used it to squirt soapy water just inside the vent where all the poo was at (feeling like a weirdo the whole time) to see if it would make the poo come out. Sure enough it worked like a charm and out came a ton of nasty poo. I kept repeating until it seemed like pretty much all of what was stuck in there had been flushed out. Poor thing, I can't imagine it felt good to be carrying all that around and not be able to go!
Anyway, after everything was cleaned up and freshly covered in ointment, I gave her a shot of Tylan (only antibiotic I had on hand) and let her go back outside with my fingers crossed. She had been eating and drinking normally and nobody has been hassling her so I figured she was better off out with her friends.
The next two days I rounded her up to clean the wound, give her another shot of antibiotics, and reapply the ointment. The difference was amazing even on the first day. No need to repeat the enema, she is pooing just fine now and her vent looks 100 times better. No more nasty infection, just clean healing tissue. Her fever feels like it was gone today, too, though I will give her a full 5 day course of the Tylan just in case.
I can't believe she is healing this fast when I had pretty much figured her for a gonner. Man, chickens are amazing animals!
