Chicken neck attack!! Help!

[hatchichickens]

@Anabariful Wishing a full and speedy recovery to your sweet girl. I hope she's still hanging in there. Thank you so much for documenting everything. Also big thanks to all of the community for their input and knowledge, this has been a really informative post.

 

[Anabariful]

Here's the area of concern: it's still kinda dark from the blue kote staining but you can tell it's darker than the other areas. No draining, no discharge, no smell, and it's not feeling warm so I don't *think* there's an infection.

 

[NancyNurseCxMama]

From here (wish I could see it up close), it doesn't look like healthy tissue. There looks like some debris in the area too.
I would take a syringe with some saline and flush the cruddy stuff out and look again. Hard to guess how far the non-healthy tissue goes. At this point it is too late to try to join the wound edges and I would try to keep that area moist with a saline dressing. It is perhaps better that this area is open---it looks ischemic and may indicate dead or dying tissue that needs to be debrided if possible. If you can possibly trim the very dark areas away, down to clean pinker tissue, it would be a good thing to do, but only if you can actually lift the deadened areas away and are sure that you are not cutting into something vital.
Closing the wound without removing dead tissue would be worse than leaving it open. Wounds can heal very well by secondary intention (basically healing from the inside to the outside) but they require moisture and coverage. I would do Neosporin on the edges but not inside the wound itself---cleaning and the antibiotic injections should be enough to take care of the deeper wound and since the Neosporin has an oil base I wouldn't use it inside the wound itself.
Again---you are handling this so well!!!!

 

[Anabariful]

Dura-penicillin which is listed as long lasting antibiotic or regular penicillin which is listed as short term? Both liquid.

 

[Anabariful]

Also... 1/2 in or 3/4 in 20g needles?

 

[NancyNurseCxMama]

The penicillin---Sorry---I don't know. A guess would be to get the regular pcn---the one for cattle might be too concentrated? Guessing here.
Either needle length should be okay I would think---you wouldn't be going in to the hub, as the more experienced chicken people here discussed earlier.
@casportpony , @Eggcessive , can you chime in about the pcn?
Somebody?

 

[hatchichickens]

Eek. No one else is responding so I am Googling for answers for you (Sorry about the edits). At first I read Regular but it also looks like the Dura-Pen would be fine based on PoultryPedia.com https://poultrypedia.com/poultrypedia/medicine-chart
Their "Treating with Penicillin" seems to be helpful also regarding administration and dosage. https://poultrypedia.com/poultrypedia/poultry-podiatry#chickens_penicillin_injection

 

[Eggcessive]

Use the procaine penicillin G on the left, not the benzocaine. I would go with the shorter needles since chicken injections should only be 1/4 inch deep. A 20 gauge needle should be used since it is thick.

 

[NancyNurseCxMama]

Wonderful site---yes, it looks like both are okay?
The link "Treating with Penicillin" is good---thank you!

 

[NancyNurseCxMama]

Use the procaine penicillin G on the left, not the benzocaine. I would go with the shorter needles since chicken injections should only be 1/4 inch deep. A 20 gauge needle should be used since it is thick.

That's not benzocaine---it's benzathine. It makes the pcn longer lasting, IIRC.