Dog injured hen

[glensgirls]

Hello, so I am new to the group, I had 5 lovely orpington girls in the garden and I just adore them. However sadly today there was a slight altercation between one of them and my dog. Sadly she passed away, this has never been an issue before, they've lived together happily and I have no idea what caused it today, they aren't ever together unsupervised anyway. My question is though, if something ever happened again what to do. So there was the tiniest cut to her head and she was alive but panicked and showed neurological symptoms and then bled from her tongue. I did everything I could, I had her wrapped up and cleaned her up but she passed away as I did this. I would have got her to the vets if I had had the chance before I lost her. In the instance of neurological damage is there anything can be done? She was twisting her neck and fell over. Please don't give me hate as I am truly heartbroken to have lost her. I am just looking to educate myself if anything showed similar symptoms as reading up on it it can happen quite easily from an awkward knock etc. This was by no means a mauling, just one snap which barely broke her skin but I also wonder if she bit her own tongue if this is something that can happen?

Not really sure what I'm looking for here, just an opportunity to learn for the future I think. Or if there was something differently I could have done.

 

[coach723]

I'm so sorry.
This is pretty normal behavior for a dog, unfortunately, even if they are just 'playing' they can really hurt them. For the dog it's often just a 'game' and something that flaps and runs is just exciting to them. They often shake or squeeze when they catch something, so even if there are not external obvious injuries, the bird can still be injured inside. She may have had a head trauma since there was a cut on her head, their bones are not as heavy as ours, or nerve trauma or internal injuries. And birds will go into shock very quickly, and that in itself can be fatal in some cases. I've lost birds to foxes that had little external obvious damage, and they died in my arms, so I know how heartbreaking it can be. When you have an injured bird the first thing to do is treat for shock. Get them in a warm, low light, quiet place. A good way to warm them is to put dry bath towels in the drier to warm them up and then wrap the bird or lay the bird on them, a sick or injured bird can become hypothermic easily. Offer water or electrolites (room temperature or slightly warm), you can hold it in a small dish in front of them, or drip it onto the beak and let them swallow if they are responsive, and give them some time to calm down and recover from shock. If there is a lot of bleeding then you need to deal with that, other more minor injuries can sometimes wait a bit, until they are not so shocky. Fluids are far more important than food, so don't worry if they won't eat right away, but try to get them to drink. Once they recover from the shock you can deal with any wounds. So sorry.

 

[Lor]

Things can happen quickly. Sorry for your loss.

 

[Eggcessive]

Very sorry for your loss. I have lost a pullet and had 2 others slightly injured when they jumped up on the 4 foot yard fence and then over into my yard. My gold retriever chased then and played with them. I then trained him by leaving the dead chicken‘s body in the yard, and used a shock collar once. He did not ever even look at a chicken again, and later when we had a few that lived inside out yard, he would avoid them and taught the younger dogs to avoid them.

The one pullet that died had not marks on her. The other two who survived had a few missing feathers. This happened over several weeks, and I had to install poultry netting to keep the chickens from jumping up on top of the chainlink fence. That worked well for years. Chickens can die from stress after being chased, and take care not to wrap them too tightly when working on them, incase they cannot breathe.