Chicken missing skin. I am concerned

[flightyone]

My plymouth rock seems to have met up with a predator. She is missing skin and it appears all of tail feathers. She is almost a year old. I flushed the area with hydrogen peroxide and put her in the broody coop. She is standing and eating a little. Any ideas if she'll make it through the night? Any other ideas for treatment?

 

[Zoey]

Read through this link..

will be helpful !1

http://fowlfacts.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=afflictiondiseaseff&action=display&thread=1642

 

[Chickengal505]

IDK about further treatment but dont use hydrogen peroxide to poften because it will kill live tissue.

 

[Judy]

Chickens can survive some awful injuries. If she is eating and drinking, she will hopefully be fine. I'd smear her up with Neosporin ointment and just baby her a bit, keep warm, offer favorite treats, etc. Put a little Gatorade or pedialyte or any of those sports drinks in her water if you have any. She will probably have to be kept separate from the flock to prevent them attacking her. Keep in mind she will be at the bottom of the pecking order when she is returned.

If you keep BluKote or a similiar product, it can mask wounds so they can go back with the flock -- if it's not too bad.

 

[flightyone]

I did check out the link, very helpful if you are also looking for tips. thank you!

My feedstore had Blue Lotion. I've applied it and will continue to keep her clean, dry and away from the other birds. Thank you

 

[Miss Chuckles]

I had a similar experience this summer when my hen was attacked by (I think) a feral cat who managed to pull off all of the skin on her back along with much of the muscle. She had puncture wounds about 1/2 an inch deep in some parts of her neck and back and she was missing huge chunks - it's almost like something ate some of her but wasn't able to finish her off.
It's possible she would have made it on her own but she was in pretty bad shape so I think some of the things I did actually made a difference, some didn't. Here's what I used:
I cleaned the wound with diluted iodine (just the once). I think the two biggest risks for animals once they've been injured is shock and infection so I put her by a low heat source (away from the other birds), started giving her some homemade electrolyte formula with a dropper and gave her some rescue remedy. The next day her wound had crusted over so I mixed up a spritzer with very diluted tea tree oil and citricidal (both from the health food store - these are natural remedies that have antibacterial properties) to spray the scab with. I fed her yogurt, boiled eggs, all of the soft super healthy foods and ones she was able to eat. I actually fed her a lot of fruit with the electrolyte solution dripped onto it because she wasn't really drinking that much and I wanted her to get some fluid in her. I also crushed up some tylenol (can't remember the dosage but I found it somewhere on this site). All the time she just kept on going and seemed to want to move around and try to eat so I decided I would just keep looking after her and see what happened. After about 4 days she was eating pretty well but I noticed her scab was starting to smell awful - a sure sign of infection. I think her wounds were so extensive that it was inevitable that she would get an infection. The vet supplied me with antibiotics and I did have to give her one injection a day over three days (so horrible) but once the infection cleared up she just kept getting better and better. I used a comfrey salve on the wound and from there it took about a month for the gigantic scab to fall off and another 4 or so weeks for the other, smaller scabs to flake off. A big problem at this point is they begin to pick so she had to wear a little cape for a while which she wasn't too happy about. At 2 months her feathers grew back in enough to cover her back again and now she's strutting around like nothing ever happened. To be honest, due to the extent of her injuries I'm amazed she survived and I'm actually in awe of how quickly she healed (don't think a person would do so well with most of their back eaten off) - chickens are amazing!

 

[chickens egg me on]

Hope this helps! Read on for a sec--I bumped into someone's suggestion here on BYC to read a book called, "City Chicks". The book sounded good so I bought it for my kindle. I couldn't put this book down! It has wonderful information on nearly everything having to do with chickens. The author is a pharmacist and has the gift of making complex ideas easy to understand. Anyway, not too long after reading the book, one of my hens (Pip) was attacked by something out in the barnyard. Apparently, I happened out in time to stop the attack but hadn't taken my flashlight out so, though she didn't feel 'right' when I found her in the yard, I put her up on the roost and locked the door to the coop. Next day she didn't come out of the roost area. I found her very sick and 'wilted' looking with clear damage to the rear area of her body. Owing to the new information I got from City Chicks, I brought Pip into the house, bathed her so I could see the wound area and clean it, put her in a dog kennel, and went on a hunt around town for the things the author of this book suggested would fix a sick/injured chicken. I gathered colloidal silver, comfrey salve, and a 5 mil dropper and went home right away to administer the salve and silver. By morning, she appeared to be feeling better but her poop was coming out of the injury--not where it should be! I worried for several days not sure what to do for her. Clearly the large intestine had been pierced by the predator. After several days of her not eating, I started giving her yogurt mixed with a little water. But she wasn't getting better and the poop was still coming out of the wrong place. I remembered hearing some years ago of a woman that had done minor surgery on her injured bird and I knew my hen would die if I didn't act, so I asked my partner to hold onto our hen and with the smallest needle I have and some thread (sterilizied using alcohol), I sewed the intestine closed. Surprisingly, our hen didn't object. When I finished the surgery, the poop was coming out of the right place again. After several days I had to remove the scab that had developed because there appeared to be pus developing under it. At that time, I removed the sutures, too. Each day I took Pip out to spend about an hour free-ranging with the flock so they wouldn't forget about one another. A couple of days ago, she moved back out with them. She is as good as ever, alot more trusting, and I am proud that I was able to save her. The use of antibiotics was probably warranted given her injuries but I am not as trusting as I once was about such things. By not using them, I didn't compromise Pip's immune system or my family's. We can eat her eggs as soon as she starts laying again and not worry about our exposure to needless antibiotics. If you want anymore information about how to treat your hen with colloidal silver and comfrey salve, please PM me and I'll try my best to help. Very best wishes to you and your hen.

 

[Noeggy]

Hope this helps! Read on for a sec--I bumped into someone's suggestion here on BYC to read a book called, "City Chicks". The book sounded good so I bought it for my kindle. I couldn't put this book down! It has wonderful information on nearly everything having to do with chickens. The author is a pharmacist and has the gift of making complex ideas easy to understand. Anyway, not too long after reading the book, one of my hens (Pip) was attacked by something out in the barnyard. Apparently, I happened out in time to stop the attack but hadn't taken my flashlight out so, though she didn't feel 'right' when I found her in the yard, I put her up on the roost and locked the door to the coop. Next day she didn't come out of the roost area. I found her very sick and 'wilted' looking with clear damage to the rear area of her body. Owing to the new information I got from City Chicks, I brought Pip into the house, bathed her so I could see the wound area and clean it, put her in a dog kennel, and went on a hunt around town for the things the author of this book suggested would fix a sick/injured chicken. I gathered colloidal silver, comfrey salve, and a 5 mil dropper and went home right away to administer the salve and silver. By morning, she appeared to be feeling better but her poop was coming out of the injury--not where it should be! I worried for several days not sure what to do for her. Clearly the large intestine had been pierced by the predator. After several days of her not eating, I started giving her yogurt mixed with a little water. But she wasn't getting better and the poop was still coming out of the wrong place. I remembered hearing some years ago of a woman that had done minor surgery on her injured bird and I knew my hen would die if I didn't act, so I asked my partner to hold onto our hen and with the smallest needle I have and some thread (sterilizied using alcohol), I sewed the intestine closed. Surprisingly, our hen didn't object. When I finished the surgery, the poop was coming out of the right place again. After several days I had to remove the scab that had developed because there appeared to be pus developing under it. At that time, I removed the sutures, too. Each day I took Pip out to spend about an hour free-ranging with the flock so they wouldn't forget about one another. A couple of days ago, she moved back out with them. She is as good as ever, alot more trusting, and I am proud that I was able to save her. The use of antibiotics was probably warranted given her injuries but I am not as trusting as I once was about such things. By not using them, I didn't compromise Pip's immune system or my family's. We can eat her eggs as soon as she starts laying again and not worry about our exposure to needless antibiotics. If you want anymore information about how to treat your hen with colloidal silver and comfrey salve, please PM me and I'll try my best to help. Very best wishes to you and your hen.

please help me!

 

[Debbie292d]

please help me!

Please make a post in our Emergency/Diseases forum. Provide as much information about the situation as you can.