One of my young friends has asked me to ask you a question for him ...
He has a rooster set apart from his other birds, it is a hatchery bird bought as a chick, was raised with a few other roosters, has been alone in a cage since he was let outdoors, only has a few other roosters in adjacent cages, and has had no direct contact with the rest of the flock (though no bio-security, either). This one rooster has developed some hard lumps under one eye. He had me look at the bird for him though I assured him I know nothing about sick chickens. At least I can describe what I found.
There are two noticeable lumps, one larger than the and directly below the eye, the smaller one lower and more toward the beak. To my untrained eye there seems to be no other symptoms: his eyes and nose look clear; he and his cage smell fine; he is eating and drinking; he is behaving "normally" though this is a bit difficult to evaluate as he is confined to a cage so I can't seem him run or "socialize;" he seems to have nice feathers; and he seems to be a pretty good weight for his size (he is not quite a year old). There are no open sores, I tried to check inside his mouth to see if the lump was visible inside ... but this was impossible for me.
I do think the lumps are big enough that the one eye looks a little squinty as the bottom "lid" is being pushed up from below, and he seems to have to work a bit to see around that.
I have no idea if this lump started out hard or squishy. I don't know how long the lumps have been developing.
Any ideas what it is? What to do about it? I've only found information about squishy oozy lumps with nasal discharge and gunky eyes, and this is not like that.
When I suggested culling the bird, I got tears as the reply. Poor kid.
He has a rooster set apart from his other birds, it is a hatchery bird bought as a chick, was raised with a few other roosters, has been alone in a cage since he was let outdoors, only has a few other roosters in adjacent cages, and has had no direct contact with the rest of the flock (though no bio-security, either). This one rooster has developed some hard lumps under one eye. He had me look at the bird for him though I assured him I know nothing about sick chickens. At least I can describe what I found.
There are two noticeable lumps, one larger than the and directly below the eye, the smaller one lower and more toward the beak. To my untrained eye there seems to be no other symptoms: his eyes and nose look clear; he and his cage smell fine; he is eating and drinking; he is behaving "normally" though this is a bit difficult to evaluate as he is confined to a cage so I can't seem him run or "socialize;" he seems to have nice feathers; and he seems to be a pretty good weight for his size (he is not quite a year old). There are no open sores, I tried to check inside his mouth to see if the lump was visible inside ... but this was impossible for me.
I do think the lumps are big enough that the one eye looks a little squinty as the bottom "lid" is being pushed up from below, and he seems to have to work a bit to see around that.
I have no idea if this lump started out hard or squishy. I don't know how long the lumps have been developing.
Any ideas what it is? What to do about it? I've only found information about squishy oozy lumps with nasal discharge and gunky eyes, and this is not like that.
When I suggested culling the bird, I got tears as the reply. Poor kid.
