Flock attacked by Fox, 3 roosters survived but are traumatized. Need advice on how to treat.

[Halverhahn]

Hi all,
Yesterday my flock was attacked by a fox. This happened in the middle of the day while I was talking to some landscapers in the front of the house. There was a lot of noise as they were cutting down a tree so I did not hear what was going on in the backyard. The chickens were free ranging in a fenced area. He killed 6 of my hens ( incl. 3 Silkies) and a Silkie rooster.
I have three more Silkie rosters that survived but are not doing well. We cleaned and treated their wounds, mostly neck and back wounds. I have them in the house in a cardboard box with a warming lamp above. They keep their heads on the ground most of the time though, sometimes they look up but not much. The white one barely holds his head up. The grey on sometimes stands up and looks around. We are giving them a water/electrolyte mix every 2 hours or so. What else can/should we do? The vet in this area that sees poultry has a fee of $150 per animal for emergencies.

Thank you for your help.

 

[Monguire]

Our Flock was attacked by 2 foxes about 3 weeks ago. Our Rooster was severely wounded and is still recovering. I posted about it a couple of days ago, feel free to check it out:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...raphic-photos-included.1311261/#post-21373359

I would keep them separated for a few days and keep a close eye on them. Keep them hydrated. If they will eat and drink on their own, that's awesome! If not, make sure to keep with the fluids and try getting some food in them, if possible. I had a rough time getting a system down with my roo. My fingers got nibbled big time Finally made some teeny food cubes out of scrambled egg and pulverized feed pellets, worked really well for us.
Hopefully their wounds are not as extensive as ours was. Keeping them inside should help keep infection at bay. May want to separate them if their wounds are such that they may be pecked at by the other box mate.
Chickens seem to be an interesting combination of fragile and resilient. Sometimes the littlest thing will bring them down, but then they will recover from what seems like an impossible injury. We don't have a vet who would look at chickens around here, so we have had to do our best on our own. From what you have described, it doesn't sound like one is necessary at this point for your 3 roos.
Our battle weary buddy is still keeping his head down quite a bit, but eating and drinking on his own and starting to act more like himself, Yay! Hopefully your feathered friends will bounce back as well!

 

[cottagecheese]

Hi and welcome to the BYC flock. Very sad about the circumstances. Do you have a store that sells homeopathics close enough? I started reading on the subject and apparently one of the most common medications is Arnica, given after accidents, the one known for 'injury recovery', recovery from blows, concussions.
https://joettecalabrese.com/blog/emergency-remedy-series-you-know-arnica-or-do-you/
In the house = safe from flystrike = excellent.
Arnica can be found, of course, on amazon.

 

[Denisea3465]

Hello and I am so very sorry you are going through this. We had this happen to us in April. We lost four hens (one we found and seemed ok except for a few missing feathers but she ended up dying suddenly 10 days after).

However, our rooster, Lola, was on death's door. He wouldn't stand or even hold his head up, was most often asleep, or unconscious, or just having his eyes closed, I'm not sure really. But his wounds were pretty awful and we just took it day to day. He didn't eat or drink so we felt that was the immediate danger. On the third day after the attack, we started tube-feeding. I had never done it before and was terrified but we were able to make it work. We tube-fed the best we could for three days and said after that, he would either need to be euthanized or start eating on his own. But he actually recovered! (He seemed MUCH, MUCH worse off than the hen so I have no idea why she died and he recovered, maybe it was just luck).

I will not go into all the details but I wish you the best and if you need any specific advice, I would be glad to chime in with my experiences over the past weeks if it might help. There are others here who are MUCH more knowledgable than I, but basically I felt it was most vital to keep him warm, hydrated, fed, quiet, and make sure his wounds were as clean as possible (this was the hardest for me).

Good luck to you and your poor boys!