Graphic! Hen has big wound, tons of maggots, pooping yolk HELP

[Lordofthegreenpeas]

Thank you. And im at the vet, but I will be soaking her. I didn't know this was "early" still. I had no idea flies and maggots can do this that fast, terrifying stuff.

I hope she gets better soon! How is she doing?

 

[michael757]

I hope she gets better soon! How is she doing?

I'm not sure, I only know they cleaned her wound, but I'll call after work to check on her. Unless they call me first which means..you know

 

[nuthatched]

I'd honestly cull her, I'm sorry you're going through this.

 

[MissE]

I though maggots were sometimes used as wound care since they eat the dead tissue and leave the healthy tissue behind.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/12/how-maggots-heal-wounds

 

[Sonya9]

If the maggots are internal (and they probably are) they will eat her alive from the inside out and you won't be able to wash them all off.

Oral Ivermectin will kill them. It is used to treat fly strike n rabbits and other critters, I know there is ivermectin dosing for chickens. Research carefully and measure twice if you are using livestock injectable ivermectin to prevent overdose.

 

[Ascholten]

Oh dear, I am so sad to hear this. Please let us know how she is doing.
Not to sound negative but if she's bloody and they are inside her, she's really bad off. This vet bill is not going to be heap. Please DM me when you get the final bill and let me know if you have pay pal and Ill do what I can to try to help you a bit with that bill.

Aaron

 

[Ascholten]

So can someone clarify please. Just being around the flies would attack? or do they have to be injured first or what? I see flies around mine fairly often, especially if I have them caged up for the day and they drop a nasty deuce or two in close quarters. Wow, this is shocking.
Aaron

 

[ryneaeiel]

So can someone clarify please. Just being around the flies would attack? or do they have to be injured first or what? I see flies around mine fairly often, especially if I have them caged up for the day and they drop a nasty deuce or two in close quarters. Wow, this is shocking.
Aaron

The flies normally lay eggs on feces or rotting meat, which the maggots will then feed on. They're like nature's garbage disposals and are still used in hospitals today for cleaning necrotic wounds of dead tissue.

However, when a chicken has feces stuck to their vent, or if they sit in feces that flies have laid eggs in, they will eat through the feces until they have nothing left to eat, in which case they will turn to the chicken out of desperation.

I've personally never seen something like this in an animal that didn't have a prior injury/condition. I've seen it twice in chickens and a few more times in ducks. Once in a goose.

In the first chicken case, she had an injury to the right of her vent. It became infected due to the feces clinging to the feathers, and the maggots went to work. In the other, it was a case of pasty butt that led to maggots.

In the first case, however, the maggots actually managed to save the hen's life. Her infection likely would have gone septic and killed her if the maggots hadn't been eating away at the rotting tissue and preventing the infection from spreading.

Both hens lived. The only one we lost was one of the ducks, who simply was too weak and was eaten away at too much. He was euthanized.

Chickens are shockingly hardy, so I wouldn't be surprised if she pulls through and heals up. I had one hen, a Jersey Giant, that was attacked by a bobcat on our security camera. We thought the bob took her until she showed up two weeks later, sans one leg that was missing from the hock down. It was infected, so I kept her inside the house and simply let the maggots do their work for about two days. Once they ate away all the rotting/dead flesh, I washed them out and removed the rest with tweezers, then soaked the leg in iodine and wrapped it. It healed up just fine and looked more like a surgical amputation than a traumatic one. She was two years old at the time and lived seven more years. We called her Pegleg.

 

[TheAlrightyGina]

I though maggots were sometimes used as wound care since they eat the dead tissue and leave the healthy tissue behind.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/12/how-maggots-heal-wounds

Yes, they are, but it is a specific species (green bottle fly) that only eats dead flesh. There are documented cases of those that eat both living and dead flesh also saving lives by keeping wounds from going septic, but those were more couldn't get medical care for days type situations, like in wars and such.

 

[michael757]

Unfortunately she passed away about 30 minutes ago, I had just gotten a call from the vet.