First time I have been this far with a bite wound, would like to avoid further mistakes

[BugStalker]

1) What type of bird , age and weight (does the chicken seem or feel lighter or thinner than the others.)
3 yr old Buckeye, a little thinner

2) What is the behavior, exactly.
She acts close to normal, but a bit bored and frustrated

3) How long has the bird been exhibiting symptoms?
She was bit May 20

4) Are other birds exhibiting the same symptoms?
no

5) Is there any bleeding, injury, broken bones or other sign of trauma.
bite wounds, half mostly healed, one apparently healing, a section that is healing very slowly, feathers growing back in

6) What happened, if anything that you know of, that may have caused the situation.
fox

7) What has the bird been eating and drinking, if at all.
lots of water, greens I pick for her, chick starter and layer feed, a few BSFL, a few pieces of fruit with probiotic powder sprinkled on them

8) How does the poop look? Normal? Bloody? Runny? etc.
runny, twice with a piece or 3 of grit, which is partly why I give cocoanut oil

9) What has been the treatment you have administered so far?
wash wound with tap water, also syringe and jet spray bottle (seems about 100 degrees F is best?) then silvadene cream and tagaderm and heat lamp or sunlight helps her dry out and warm up (blow dryer not working right)
betadine wound spray (too much, no more)
blukote spray (no more)
Clavimox orally (finished)
meloxicam orally (as needed, but none in days)
cocoanut oil orally, trying some B complex in it this time
Some nutridrench

10 ) What is your intent as far as treatment? For example, do you want to treat completely yourself, or do you need help in stabilizing the bird til you can get to a vet?
She's been to a vet.

11) If you have a picture of the wound or condition, please post it. It may help.
I am trying to post pictures...

12) Describe the housing/bedding in use

She's inside in a cage completely wrapped in gnat-proof fabric for plants to keep her safe from flies, with newspaper on the floor of the cage, which I change regularly, then an airspace and more newspaper..

 

[BugStalker]

 

[azygous]

What you've been doing appears to be pretty thorough. I don't think you've made any mistakes. Keep up the excellent care.

 

[BugStalker]

What you've been doing appears to be pretty thorough. I don't think you've made any mistakes. Keep up the excellent care.

Thanks, that's good to hear. I had a problem in that I disinfected her before a spot was ready inside, so I let her roost on the porch railing, where I could see her and thought she would stay safe and clean. (I hadn't thought about flies, yet.) The problem is, when I went to get her, ants were crawling on her, so I disinfected her again. The vet said I disinfected her well, but she got too much betadine.

 

[azygous]

I have never heard that a bird could get too much Betadine. Better that than bacteria left intact.

We all make mistakes, but the ones you may have made don't seem to amount to anything worth worrying about.

 

[BugStalker]

Here's an update:

I think the strip of skin down the center is sloughing off, at least partially. When it started coming apart more at the bottom, the smell was stronger for one washing.

Her droppings are still runny, sometimes including undigested food. I switched to putting the probiotics in one of her waterers so she'd get them throughout the day, and fewer treats, but yesterday, she drank most of it immediately, and had some totally undigested droppings, including a whole BSFL, then didn't want any more water from either waterer, or food from the feeders, only greens and some boiled egg white, leaving the yolk. She drinks when I take her out of the cage, and I'm trying to get her back to using the waterers, again. I think I will go back to fruit for now...

Here's the latest dropping, looking more digested:


She's a character, didn't want to eat this morning, except greens and mulberries, but just now shoveled all her largest feeder onto the floor and scratched up the newspaper, making happy noises, trying to eat it before it fell through the holes she was making.

She just dirtied her feed pile. It's very dark, well, it was the liquid part that was dark, oh, mulberry seeds, that's why it had dark liquid.


Now, she's preening. It's time to wash her again...

 

[BugStalker]

She really seems to like the washing if the water is warm. Once it gets cooler, she wants to go. Haha.

Her droppings are getting less runny and more digested. I think she had a partial impaction, because I saw something in her droppings I haven’t given her in over 2 weeks, but her crop was empty every morning, so it must have been stuck in her proventriculus or something... The coconut oil and massaging seems to have helped. She's eating larger pieces of things, now. Before, she was picking out smaller things to eat; didn't even want large BSFL.

Scabs are coming off wounds. The one area has scabs peeling off the sides halfway around.

She had a leaking air sac, but it had stopped by the time the vet saw her.

Sometimes she holds her wing out a bit at the shoulder, still against her body, not like she's hot, just out, maybe up a bit too, at the shoulder on the side she was attacked. I assume she's still sore or something, but thought I would ask because I think her front wounds are all healed...

 

[BugStalker]

Her back seems to be healing pretty well. She had a scab down lower that fell off, leaving these holes.
The dark stuff was coming out in a plug, sometimes, then going back in. I was removing what came off easy, which was stringy, but they kinda joined inside, and grew outward into a lump, the holes getting bigger. Today, an inch of bone came out. It was sticking out of the hole with some whitish puffy stuff I removed, and I didn't realize it was bone until it came out. It has cuts in it, like it wasn't healing, so I am hoping it's good that it's out.

 

[BugStalker]

This is the piece of bone inside a plastic bag. I'm going to save it for now, just in case. The end on the bottom right of the picture was sticking out of the hole.

 

[BugStalker]

The rest of the plug came out today. It looks like yellow scabbing in there now. I filled the tunnel with wound gel, added some neosporin in a small area the gel didn't fill, and some cream on top and bandaged it.