so_fancy_af
Chirping
At 8:30 AM a fox attacked my four chickens while I was sitting ten feet away. I was able to run after it and scare it off, but it still managed to injure my one-year-old Easter Egger. I couldn’t find her for six hours and I honestly thought she was toast. She’s partially blind and needs a lot of help. I love her to death and I can’t tell you how happy I was to find her. She was obviously exhausted, and she’s missing a bunch of feathers on her butt, though amazingly it doesn’t seem like the fox actually got purchase there. She has a fairly significant puncture wound on the midline of her back—I don’t have a photo right now because I already cleaned it and packed it full of triple antibiotic—with a tear about an inch long and two very clear tooth marks. My husband thought I was too shaken up to see the full extent of her wound, but he said it’s “pretty bad.” When I brought her home it wasn’t freely bleeding and at my first inspection I didn’t see any bone or organs. It appears she somehow avoided a corresponding puncture on her underside, which seems almost too good to be true. My husband did a full-body check of her and couldn’t find any broken bones or obvious external injuries. As soon as I got her inside and put some food and water in front of her she started eating and drinking. I put electrolyte mix in her water. She also pooped fairly soon afterward and it was a normal color and consistency. She was standing on her own and moving around a little, but because she can’t see well she generally moves very deliberately, making it hard for me to tell if she was especially shocky or favoring a leg. I set up a large refrigerator-sized box with the top cut out for her in our garage with a perch and a heating lamp on one side. She was alert and talking to me a little bit before it got dark and she started snoozing. I went to Tractor Supply and got some of the vancomycin spray suggested in another post. I’m planning on trying to clean the wound at least twice tomorrow and I may need to clip a couple feathers out of the way. What am I missing? Are there other things I can do to make her comfortable and help her heal? I know it’s impossible to say without seeing the injury, but is there a chance she will recover? I want to cry just writing that because I’m so heartbroken and afraid she’s not going to make it. I don’t know what I’ll do if I go check on her tomorrow morning and she passed away. I’ve attached a picture of her box and the bandaged wound. I’ll try to get a better photo tomorrow. Thankfully my other three girls are completely fine, just annoyed they couldn’t wander around much after I found them and put them in their coop/run. I’m not planning on letting them free range until we can make them a bomb-proof tractor. I’ve spotted a bobcat twice now, once in my yard and once in my neighbor’s, and we’re filthy with raccoons, coyote, and of course, foxes.
she looks alert in the picture and she is eating and drinking. If you found her 6 hours later and she wasn’t very bloody then it should not be that bad.
