Cleaning chicken nose

[shortishdial]

Hi everyone, meet Pepper Pots. She has been breathing with her mouth open a few times. Can I get help figuring out if there is something stuck in her nose, please? How would I go about cleaning it, as I am scared to dig in her nose?

 

[azygous]

The chicken's "nose" is called the nares. Nares are sort of like our nostrils but nares are connected without a septum as we humans have. This means you can sometimes see daylight looking from one nare through to the other nare.

Open beak breathing more often means the chicken is in some kind of stress situation instead of having trouble breathing. If the nares are clogged you will probably see gunk in them and the thin tissue above the nares will balloon each time the chicken takes a breath.

To clean them get a narrow oral syringe or eye dropper and some saline wound wash. Or use hydrogen peroxide. Squirt solution in each nare and allow to soften the gunk inside. Then you can rub a toothpick across some sandpaper to blunt the sharp tip and use it to pull the gunk out.

Finish by laying the chicken on their side and squirting solution in one nare, letting it drain out of the other nare. Then flip the chicken over and repeat on the other side.