Fowl pox?

[Noreaster Egger]

This 6 y/o barred rock hen has had a rough year with her health (I think she had a minor stroke last summer), but she’s still been kicking. A few weeks ago she developed a whitish, raised, circular lesion on one of her wattles. She was barely eating and developed greenish poop. The last few days she has been doing better…eating more and moving around better. However this evening I noticed the spot had grown and turned black and there are other black spots forming. The poop is still a little greenish, but is solid and looking better. Here’s a pic…

Could this be dry fowl pox? All of my other 17 hens seem okay so far. I’ve googled, but can’t find any other possibilities. It’s definitely not blood.

 

[Tonyroo]

A clearer close up picture would help. But from your blurry picture it might be fowl pox. It's spread by mosquitoes.

 

[Noreaster Egger]

Got a better pic this morning. She’s eating fine and has more pep in her step than usual.

 

[Wyorp Rock]

I'm going to tag in @Eggcessive and @coach723 too.

Any lesions inside the beak or bad odors?

It might be Fowl Pox. For some reason cancer comes to mind too, but very possible it's Fowl Pox.

She's 6 years old, but she may have never been exposed to Fowl Pox up until now...

Personally, I think I'd leave the lesions alone and just watch them. Do look inside her beak though.
Encourage her to eat well and stay hydrated. See if this resolves on it's own, gets worse, etc.

You mention she's struggled with issues this year, (maybe stroke?) so the slowing down may be unrelated to the lesions. You don't report if she's been laying eggs, but at 6 yrs of age, it's not uncommon for laying hens to start to have reproductive problems.

 

[Eggcessive]

I had seen this earlier, and did not respond because it just didn’t look like fowl pox to me. However, I might be wrong. It looks more like an injury from pecking or on metal fencing. Have the others been picking on her?

 

[high5]

For some reason cancer comes to mind too

That was the first thing which came to my mind... I'm not familiar with fowl pox.

 

[Noreaster Egger]

She hasn’t laid in over a year. Last year she really started to slow down. At times she has trouble seeing the food she is eating. If I hold a seed in my hand she can be a good 1/4-1/2” off. So I try to feed her everything in a bowl so she can at least come back up with something. When she’s having good days she actually gets around and can accurately see and pick vegetation on her own.

A month or so ago that big dark circular spot started as a round whitish raised wart-like feature on her wattle. It stayed like that for awhile, but it seems like it suddenly double in size and turned black like that with the few other smaller black spots with it. I thought cancer possibly as well, but would it change that quickly in a few days? I’ll go out and give her another look in a few, bit that morning pic doesn’t look drastically different from last night.

 

[Noreaster Egger]

OK…so I got the motivation to get out of the AC and give her a peek. It looks like those little black spots came off with a trace of blood left behind. The large ones are still there. So maybe another hen ever so lovingly decided to peck that wart-like thing off of her and the spots are just piled up coagulated blood? It definitely looks strange compared to other comb and wattle bleeding I’ve experienced. If you zoom in on that 2nd photo you can kinda see a round indented region where the wwrt thing may have been.

I’ll continue to monitor her. She came right over when I just brought out a bowl of frozen fruit.

 

[coach723]

It doesn't really look like pox to me either. I had a couple of cockerels get into each other last week, that is what their injuries looked like, so my guess is some kind of injury. Could have been pecked and something different was there before that. I see a small spot at the corner of the beak that looks a little different than the others. And some white spots that look like they healed up. Are her nares clear or are they blocked with gunk? Have you ever had any respiratory illness in your flock? Just wondering if something else going on with her is causing her to be targeted by flock mates. I would look inside her beak for any plaques or lesions, look in the slit in the top of her beak, see if it looks clear.