Hen with a tumor face? Please help!

[BlueChai]

Hello everyone, my boyfriend has a black hen named Daphne. She is a mama of four and has been healthy up until recently. He noticed today that she was eating less and her face looked puffy. We looked inside of her mouth and it seems like she has a big sore/tumor. Does anyone know what this could be and how to get rid of it? Any help is appreciated.

 

[Eggcessive]

Do you smell a bad odor from her beak? It looks like canker, a contagious protozoan infection passed by pigeons and wild birds. But occasionally I have seen a few posts here where someone has treated this, and it turned out to be a tumor. Wet fowl pox can also cause lesions inside the beak, so if you see any fowl pox scabs on the combs or face, then I would look at that as a possibility.

Metronidazole is the most common drug to teat canker. You can buy it online as Fish Zole, and the dosage is 250 mg daily given orally for 5-6 days. It sells for $27 here:
https://www.allivet.com/p-2393-fish...UC0b6M9aHumNc-4oII6q1zjyTu9LRKkkaApCMEALw_wcB

 

[Gray Farms]

Looks like an abscess to me.

 

[Eggcessive]

This chicken was suffering from canker. Your chicken’s lesion looks fairly clean, so I would worry about a possible tumor. A vet would be the best to identify that.

 

[BlueChai]

I dont have a vet in my area that takes birds, let alone the money. Should I buy the medicine that treats cankers or try opening it up to see if it's an abscess? I'm afraid to poke around at it and possibly make the situation worse for her.

 

[BlueChai]

Also, I've dealt with wet pox twice in my flock, and this looks much different then what I've seen before. So I'm going to rule that out as a possibility for now because the only scabs I see on her are peck scabs, which are really tiny. So i think it is either a canker, an abscess, or a tumor.

 

[Henriettamom919]

You could try treating with the antibiotic and hope for the best. If it is a tumor you'll probably have to euthanize if the vet's not an option!

I'm very sorry, regardless!

 

[Eggcessive]

How does it smell? Canker has a bad odor. It may take a day or two to develop, as one person recently experienced. But if there is no odor, I would probably wait and see. However, it would take some time to get the medicine in the mail if you need it. Canker also can increase in size, and some educators here recommend removing any plaques in the mouth that may block breathing (use caution, since they bleed.) Poultry DVM and a few others on BYC have claimed that thyme extract can treat canker, so that might be something that you would want to try, and although I couldn’t find a dosage, they sell it on Amazon.