Help!! Rooster with Fox injuries, now infection?

[Denisea3465]

I posted last week about our rooster, Lola, who was attacked by a fox. He was lethargic when I found him and not eating or drinking properly (only about 1tsp at a time if I really cajoled and made a fuss to snap him out of his stupor). So we started tube feeding him, which - when successful - seemed to work well, but takes about an hour at a time for me to finally do it and feel safe, and when you multiply that by 4x per day because he lays on his crop all day and I am not supposed to overfill, well, I just am running out of time. Plus I have no great food solution so I have been doing it on my own: baby cereal, egg yolk, poultry nutri drops, a tsp of yogurt for some probiotics. I never feel like he is getting enough nutrition though, and he has lost weight.

I am frustrated because while 7 days later now, he seems a bit perkier than before, will stand and drink and eat a bit with lots more cajoling, and is more difficult to tube-feed, which I see as a sign of him getting a little spunk back. I just don't know how long to continue.

Matters worse - and the reason I post now - is that yesterday I noticed he had discharge (yellow pus, sorry, ew) from his ears. I cleaned them with saline and they look ok in general, not overly swollen (I can't say I ever looked quite that closely to his ears before, poor dear) and no more discharge this morning (ie nothing new since coming out yesterday). His wounds seem to be healing nicely, no redness or bad smells or discharge, but I feel like he has a systemic infection now and maybe this is why he never really perked up after the first couple of days.

I have called around but there are no veterinarians willing to help with a chicken. I have an antibiotic (leftover human) called Tikacillin (Phenoxymethylpenicillin) which I googled profusely and apparently is ok for chickens, but is very narrow spectrum and I have no idea if this would even help his particular ailment (assuming it is an infection). Should I attempt to crush it and give him some of this? I feel like I have three options: either let him be and see if he shows improvement over the next couple days, try to dose the Phenoxymethylpenicillin and see if it helps, or cull him now after spending hours and hours over the past 7 days to try to heal him (I hate this option, I feel like he is recovering, and just needs a bit of proper help).

What would you do? Thank you again for your advice!

 

[ButtonquailGirl14]

@casportpony @Wyorp Rock @FarmerConnie

 

[Shadrach]

Poor Lola.
Not an easy decision to make.
I try to have some kind of guideline for such situations. It doesn't always work.
I look after free range chickens. I get quite a few injuries, mostly from hawk strikes.
Sometimes the injuries are obvious and from past experience I know that if I can keep the wounds clean and prevent any infection the chances of recovery are good.
However, internal injuries, reproductive disorders and some diseases are almost impossible to deal with, usually because I just don't know exactly what the problem is.
There are very few vets that are sufficiently experienced and well enough equipped to correctly diagnose internal injuries and reproductive problems even if they were affordable.
Supportive care advice here is great but without having the patient in front of you and having all the necessary equipment and experience it's often the chicken keeper that benefits from the support more than the chicken.
For me the single most important sign of recovery and positive long term prospects are whether or not the particular fowl will eat a sufficient quantity of food unaided. I have tube fed and in each case the fowl has died and while I try to be very careful in assessing whether or not I am just prolonging suffering, attachment always clouds ones judgment.
I have a three day rule now (yes I break it) but I think its a good rule.
If an injured or sick fowl won't eat a normal quantity of food after three days of intensive care (tube feeding, heavy medication, confinement) then ime they are not going to make it. Some people have given intensive care for weeks and as far as I know had a fowl recover. I think such cases are rare. My belief is more often than not these fowl die, we just don't get to read about it.
I started a thread on this topic. There are four cases in the thread and peoples views posted in between.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/is-it-better-to-let-them-die.1268732/

 

[nightowl223]

I posted last week about our rooster, Lola, who was attacked by a fox. He was lethargic when I found him and not eating or drinking properly (only about 1tsp at a time if I really cajoled and made a fuss to snap him out of his stupor). So we started tube feeding him, which - when successful - seemed to work well, but takes about an hour at a time for me to finally do it and feel safe, and when you multiply that by 4x per day because he lays on his crop all day and I am not supposed to overfill, well, I just am running out of time. Plus I have no great food solution so I have been doing it on my own: baby cereal, egg yolk, poultry nutri drops, a tsp of yogurt for some probiotics. I never feel like he is getting enough nutrition though, and he has lost weight.

I am frustrated because while 7 days later now, he seems a bit perkier than before, will stand and drink and eat a bit with lots more cajoling, and is more difficult to tube-feed, which I see as a sign of him getting a little spunk back. I just don't know how long to continue.

Matters worse - and the reason I post now - is that yesterday I noticed he had discharge (yellow pus, sorry, ew) from his ears. I cleaned them with saline and they look ok in general, not overly swollen (I can't say I ever looked quite that closely to his ears before, poor dear) and no more discharge this morning (ie nothing new since coming out yesterday). His wounds seem to be healing nicely, no redness or bad smells or discharge, but I feel like he has a systemic infection now and maybe this is why he never really perked up after the first couple of days.

I have called around but there are no veterinarians willing to help with a chicken. I have an antibiotic (leftover human) called Tikacillin (Phenoxymethylpenicillin) which I googled profusely and apparently is ok for chickens, but is very narrow spectrum and I have no idea if this would even help his particular ailment (assuming it is an infection). Should I attempt to crush it and give him some of this? I feel like I have three options: either let him be and see if he shows improvement over the next couple days, try to dose the Phenoxymethylpenicillin and see if it helps, or cull him now after spending hours and hours over the past 7 days to try to heal him (I hate this option, I feel like he is recovering, and just needs a bit of proper help).

What would you do? Thank you again for your advice!

Did you ever order any other antibiotics online, like through the fish medicine sites, and they just haven't arrived yet? I would prefer he be on a broad-spectrum antibiotic like one of the tetracyclines, or cephalexin. However, the Tikacillin is a penicillin-type antibiotic, and not really as narrow a spectrum antibiotic as you might think.

His infection may not be systemic; it's possible his lowered immunity due to the attack could have left him weakened enough for a stray germ to get past his immune system defences. You might flush his ears out with a half & half peroxide/water blend with a syringe, too, to help clean them out.

Were it me, I'd order the tetracycline or cephalexin and go ahead and start with the Tikacillin. I'll try to look up what the dosage is if you need that done. You may have already found it if you did that much research, though.

 

[Denisea3465]

Thank you so much!!

Shadrach, I actually tried a 3-day "rule" after first finding him. He seemed to perk up just a tiny bit every day so I thought I would extend his 3 days and so here we are. We did make the decision yesterday to stop tube feeding. We did it for 4.5 days. We keep coming back to that we don't want to make him suffer. I didn't want him to be recovering but end up starving to death, that is obviously cruel. So I think we will check today and possibly tomorrow, but if he is not eating, then I guess that will be it. Poor Lola. He is such a sweetie.

nightowl223, unfortunately we don't have access to ordering antibiotics the same way you can in the states (I live in Sweden). It's great to hear that tikacillin might actually be a decent thing to try. I think that if he is drinking (he is, but it seems like only when I offer. His food and water seem to go untouched unless I prod him), I might try grinding it into some water to give to him orally. The dosage is throwing me for a loop. The pills I have are 800mg each so I am not sure how to get that down to a usable small quantity.

I have more but my baby is crying now so I have to be off. Thank you so much for talking me through this! Three of my hens were lost in the fox attack, and I was sad but ok with that, but I hate to see an animal suffer, so I will do anything I can within reason to make him better. But I also know that sometimes culling is the most humane so I am just trying to work out which is best now. Talking it out really does help!