Duck head injury *NEED Advice*

[WVduckchick]

Not much for me to add except check over any other ducks that were nearby, just in case they have injuries too. And watch for whatever it was to return.

 

[gtaus]

The vets in my area (northeast TN) are well, not very inclined to save livestock as they are not "worth it."

Here is the hard truth for me. I don't have a local vet as an option, but a $60 vet visit is equal to me purchasing 20 healthy chicks, or 12 ducks, or 6 geese. So my plan, from the start, was to order 10 chicks hoping that I could winter over at least 6 hens. If I lose some birds to disease or predators, that will be too bad, but it's already figured into my plan.

Also, I don't really consider my backyard flock as livestock, but they are not pets either. I will manage them as best as possible, but have to accept loss and move on caring for the remaining, healthy birds.

I hope your duck recovers. If you don't have the desire or financial means to take it to a vet, then I would never second guess your choice. I would try to treat it at home, but I would personally not take it to the vet. Especially if the vet is inclined to put the animal down and then hand you a bill for visit. But, like I said, I don't even have that option.

 

[Mad Murduck]

First of all, WOW!
That is a tough duck. I dont have much to offer that hasn't been discussed but vet or not,you may consider a duoderm or tagaderm style bandage to help control moisture and bacteria. I wish you the best of luck.

 

[Duckworth]

One of my ducks had a 1-1/2” slash down the center of the top of her head, to the bone, inflicted by a raccoon. My avian vet anesthetized her briefly, cleaned the wound and put stitches in the top of her head. He put her on antibiotics. I kept all three of my injured girls indoors while they recovered because it was below freezing and I needed to armor my duck pen more securely.

Four months later, you would never be able to tell she was ever injured. The only one of my ducks that looks like she was hurt is the one whose face was crushed and bill almost detached and she doesn’t look bad.

 

[Duckworth]

The cost for getting all three injured ducks healthy was just under $600. Not cheap! But my husband is allergic to chicken eggs and duck eggs aren’t readily available here. It’s also not usually easy to find adult laying ducks for sale, though we ultimately got lucky and were able to add three layers to our flock to replace the one that died immediately in the attack and increase our overall production.

 

[Duckworth]

Most of the cost was for the duck with the crushed face.

 

[azygous]

If your duck had a brain injury, it wouldn't be acting normally. It would be unable to stand, balance and walk. Head injuries, while serious, look much worse than they are. I've dealt with this issue twice now, coincidentally with the same chicken. Here's how I treated her. https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/bad-roo-poor-hen-lightening-strikes-twice.1308349/

She has made a complete recovery and even grew back some feathers over the wound. The secret is to clean the wound each day and keep it moist with antibiotic ointment. (No pain reliever.)

 

[gtaus]

The cost for getting all three injured ducks healthy was just under $600. Not cheap!

Did you change the way you manage your flock after this attack? IIRC, you were limited on the number of ducks you could have, is that correct? I remember the vet cost was considered on balance worth it because your husband is allergic to so many foods, but not duck eggs which he needs for protein.

Just wondering if culling the injured birds and starting over was an option? For $600, I think you could buy lots of duck eggs, even if you had to order them, until the new ducks started laying. Or were your options more limited?

I think the OP's duck will probably survive and do well with just home care. And if the duck goes to the vet, that's OK too. We all have different reasons for managing a home flock and most of us don't do it to save money.

 

[Nathalie]

Oh my!! That's a nasty looking wound right there! You did very well on cleaning it and applying antibiotics and bandages. That's the best thing you could do. Keep your duck separated from the rest and try to figure out who or what caused it. Otherwise it might happen again. Maybe something sharp is sticking out from the fence? Maybe you have a rat that you don't know about? They can be very nasty creatures that turn me into angry Hulk when I notice one (happend only once here and it got shoveled to death after it tried to run between my feet. Didn't notice any rat or rat poo since then).

One question though that came into my mind too: do you perhaps have chickens that roam along with the ducks? Because my own experience tells me that chickens - even when it's a very small wound and even it's not a chicken who has the wound - will continuously peck at it once they've noticed it, making the wound bigger and bigger until the wounded animal succumbs from it. This can happen very fast too. I've seen this happen in my own chicken flock 2 years ago - I don't have any chickens anymore now - but also with the chickens of the next door neighbor, just 2 months ago. Their victim being an old duck, not even a chicken. They had to put down the animal due to the wound being irreversible by the time we all had noticed. And also because of the very old age of the duck (she was going 20!!). She stood no chance against her cannibalistic peckers.

Keep us updated!

 

[Duckworth]

Did you change the way you manage your flock after this attack? IIRC, you were limited on the number of ducks you could have, is that correct? I remember the vet cost was considered on balance worth it because your husband is allergic to so many foods, but not duck eggs which he needs for protein.

Just wondering if culling the injured birds and starting over was an option? For $600, I think you could buy lots of duck eggs, even if you had to order them, until the new ducks started laying. Or were your options more limited?

I think the OP's duck will probably survive and do well with just home care. And if the duck goes to the vet, that's OK too. We all have different reasons for managing a home flock and most of us don't do it to save money.

It might well have been cheaper to cull and go without eggs. Had we not sought vet care, we would probably have lost our entire flock. Even the one less injured duck would probably have died of infection and loneliness. Starting over would have meant five or six months of no eggs. It was too cold to ship ducklings to our area and special ordering through our local feed store, which is how we got our Welshies to start with, took almost two months and the manager who was willing to do it had left.

We don’t live near a large metro area and duck eggs only occasionally show up at the local co-op and never in the grocery store. They usually run $5-6 per half dozen. My husband eats two dozen per week. We haven’t found any at local farmers’ markets, which are only open in the summer.

Starting over might have been less expensive, but the weather was way too cold to brood outdoors and we no longer had a room in the house available to brood in safety from our dogs. Our high temps were still in the teens and twenties Fahrenheit. I was still recovering from shoulder surgery and couldn’t bear much weight. We brooded indoors the last time and it was a lot of heavy work keeping the brooder clean and fresh. I just didn’t have the energy.

This was not a completely financial decision for us. The toll it takes on my husband to have his food choices even more limited is significant. He has food allergies to several staples of the typical American diet that take a huge number of foods off his table. In addition, he was supposed to have secured the ducks in their house at dusk, but had left them in what we thought was an adequately secured, roofed pen, covered in layers of ice and snow, while we went to church. He is very attached to each of our ducks, though I do most of their care. I know him. He is practical, but would have grieved their loss deeply. Again, not a completely practical financial decision.

Our duck pen is now thoroughly armored. We could still lose them to a tornado. My husband wants to put on a wood roof on top of the full hardware cloth currently covered by a heavy tarp. Not a day goes by that he doesn’t regale me with a story of the ducks’ antics. He broke his back as a teen and is in pain all day, every day, so having the ducks cheer him is worth a great deal. He still works full time to support our family and I am at home caring for our son who has special needs.

Money doesn’t grow on trees for us, but it isn’t necessarily the driving force behind every decision, either. That’s why I posted what our total vet bills came out to, so the words “not cheap” would have more practical meaning.