HELP! Vent Gleet and MAGGOTS on my hen!

[erinnyes]

Update! My hen looks awful today, her comb has flopped and is blue at the tips and her tail is drooping. When I found her this morning her eyes were half-closed and she was not her alert perky self. After bathing her I was able to get a good look below her vent area. It's definitely distended and red looking, although the redness might be because she had a lot pf poop stuck to her butt and skin and this might have irritated it.

She does not seem like she's straining and trying to push it out, though. Any advice?

 

[erinnyes]

It could possibly be vent gleet:
http://ultimatefowl.atwiki.com/page/Vent Gleet

I had never heard of this one before, but after bathing her I definitely saw white sores near her vent! I can upload pics if that's helpful. My question is that the article mentions dosing with castor oil but not how. By mouth? In the vent?

 

[Suzierd]

It's listed with things to give orally. Be careful to give her a little bit at a time and let her swallow.

 

[erinnyes]

Uuugh, I just made the most unpleasant discovery! Yesterday I thought my hen was going to die. She looked very sick. As of two days ago I have her Epsom salts to flush out her system and fed her plenty of buttermilk, yogurt, raw apple cider vinegar and garlic powder in a blend. This morning she looked better. Her comb was less blue, her tail didn't droop as much and she seemed more alert. I took it as a good sign.

I went to check on her just now and she was sitting in the dirt, I guess she had been dustbathing, and something weird caught my eye. When I looked under her tail region I found MAGGOTS in her skin under her vent. They're not just on it, they're in it, like coming out of it. I guess that might have been what those white lesions were? Eggs? She had a very poopy butt for about a week, and when I bathed her I noticed those white things in her skin that appeared to be attached...

EEEEW. What do I do? She still looks perkier, I can't tell if she's in pain or what. She smells AWFUL though and I am COMPLETELY freaked out. HELP?!

 

[Suzierd]

Wow that sounds nasty, poor girl. I hope someone will join in and give you some advice. I'm giving you a bump to the top.
I would try flushing it out and cleaning her, do you think she has an infection? Do you have a vet you could call and talk to? Keep us posted.

 

[gg706]

Sorry, I almost think I would put her out of her misery.....it sounds horrible.

 

[bj taylor]

if she's still perkier, i would continue to give her the acv, buttermilk, and yogurt. if she has this vent gleet (thrush - which is a yeast infection according to dawg's link) these have to make improvement. i'm speaking from human health point of view. thrush responds to providing good bacteria to re-establish a balanced gut which is what you get from the buttermilk & yogurt.
.
maggots eat dead flesh. as gross as they are they can be benficial in getting rid of what has died. they have been used in old medicine for thousands of years to get rid of the dead flesh so the healthy could re-grow. they won't eat live or healthy flesh, they will just go away unless she is too far gone.

i know very very little about chickens. i'm new to chickens, but some health things are the same no matter human or chicken.
i sure hope you have a happy ending with this. good luck

 

[Just reebok]

In my experience as a vet tech, clean the area thoroughly... warm soap and water and some betadine solution will help. Maggots are usually eating any dead skin or feces.. which given the area is logical. Clean everywhere and if there is a possibility of keeping her indoors for a weeklies or so do that. Also... triple antiobiotic ointment on clean dry skin. Twice a day for a week at least. Now...thid is the protocol for dogs and cats. I do NOT have experience with chickens so I dont know if they can even be exposed to betadine or triple antibiotic ointment. Best advice is to find a vet who works on livestock, call a zoo and talk to their avian vet, or call your local livestock research center. Here is SC we have the Clemson extension center and they do testing on livestock and such. The vet i worked for was one of theres and i got a lot of exposure to pathology through them hopefully, it will help and she will feel better soon.

 

[erinnyes]

My hen is worse than ever now. She's extremely lethargic and won't even stand on her own. When I found the maggots earlier I read on one of the threads that the thing to do is clean the area with soap and water, remove as many maggots as possible and then put SWAT on the wound to prevent any new fly problems. I had heard that maggots were good for cleaning a wound but that they could also carry diseases and that once they had eaten away the dead tissue they'd start on the living tissue (someone called it "flystrike" in another thread). Well, I didn't take any chances, not sure if this was true or not, but I cleaned the wound, removed maggots and caked on the SWAT.

The part I feel really horrible about (well, I feel horrible about the whole thing, but still), was that I was trying to examine the wound and since it's under her vent that's hard to do from the ground, so I lifted her by her legs like I've done a million times to my chickens when I dust them for bugs and inspect them. But when I did it, she threw up A LOT of liquid, and when I immediately put her down she would not stand at all. I think she may have aspirated some.

Unfortunately, I have no vet I know of to ask about avian problems, but tomorrow I will call my cat/dog vet and ask about the safety of betadine or triple antibiotic ointment on chickens and see if he knows anything. I've called around but never found an area vet that does chickens or birds of any kind. Tomorrow I will clean the wound again and see how it looks, but by the smell of it I can bet it's infected. The area around the ulcer is very red and angry too.

I thought about putting her down, but I just don't have the stomach for that. If she's still this bad tomorrow then I will probably have to, but I'm holding out hope that a good, quiet rest period might bring her back out of it. I've never had to kill one of my hens before, they're kind of just "pets" with an egg bonus. I would hardly know how to do it, let alone the fear of doing it incorrectly and causing her pain.

Thank you all for your advice. I am just waiting out tonight and seeing how she is in the morning. The guilt is really overwhelming, I feel like such a bad chicken mom.

 

[josebeth1]

We had the same thing a couple of weeks ago, discovered by my husband. He cleaned out all of the maggots and the area under her vent had an abscess the size of a half dollar. We have just kept it covered with Blue Kote and it has dried and she seems to be healing well. I've noticed a lot of our flock have feces caked and dried under their vents which has never happened before. I've also noticed others are posting with similar comments. Am wondering if anyone thinks this might be related to the roundworm treatment in the water that we did about 6 weeks ago? We never saw any sign of worms after they had three days of it in their water, but now I'm wondering if they actually did expel parasites which caught up in the fluff and dried up mixed in with feces? It's impossible to tell as I am now cutting away the yuck and getting them cleaned up. I think this is what led to the infection/maggots with this girl.