Hens skin on neck sliced wide open on fence

[Birdielee]

These photos are from yesterday. After she grabs a bunch of greens she seems more willing to eat chicken feed.
We are back to moist wound care. We did vetericyn for a little while, and no bandage. Yesterday i put a bandage on her, with vetericyn, and a little lanolin cream here and there. The main treatment yesterday, other than vetericyn, is that I tried again with gelatin and turmeric powders, mixed together, and wettened into a gel with vetericyn. I globbed that into the holes where her muscle is exposed and closed everything up with vet wrap. There was some triple antibiotic involved somewhere, too, i think.
Today i gave her the antibiotic in the AM. The pm one I was waiting until it was late enough, and forgot. She was long asleep when I remembered. I left the bandage from late yesterday on today. She got to wander around the yard for a while again today.

I was able to weigh her finally. Her scrawny self weighs 5.6 lbs

I'm doing pretty lousy on aftercare. Problem is that I'm building a chicken coop right now.

 

[Birdielee]

Update number one bazillion:

Today I left her with the gelatin/turmeric combo all day until the late afternoon. Around 6 or 7 I cut off the old bandage and checked out the scene. Looking moist and good in some areas, but... more open? Maybe stitches ripped or dissolved? Or maybe all this black is a scab? I'm not sure what's going on exactly, but all in all it looked like improvement, and it sure doesn't seem to bother Miss Ellis. She's getting a little (not a lot) feistier about the bandage thing.

She has 2 doses of antibiotic today. And I gave her a bunch of sunflower seeds (with the hulls) and barley along with her feed that she doesn't eat.
I wonder how much coconut oil i could give her without causing problems? That's certainly got some calories.

Here are some photos.
This is after removing yesterday's bandage, before spraying anything on.

We closed her back up with vetericyn, triple antibiotic ointment, corona lanolin ointment, vetwrap. Sunflower seeds. !

 

[Birdielee]

That doesn't seem right. Maybe I changed the bandage twice today. Pretty sure I did. These photos are the evening change.

In the morning, she shook turmeric/gelatin goop on my shirt.

 

[Emmytheduckgirl]

Oh wow that looks pretty deep! I hope it gets better!

 

[Birdielee]

Yeah, she's a mess, but she seems more bothered by all the goop i keep getting on her feathers than by the injury at this point. It was only skin, but a very long cut.

 

[Emmytheduckgirl]

Yea I see how the cut is long! But that is one funny chicken to not care about the cut!

 

[Birdielee]

She cared at first!

 

[Emmytheduckgirl]

That makes sense! It looks like that would hurt so much.

 

[Birdielee]

These photos are hard for me to understand even as i look at her neck. So i wanted you to be able to understand what's going on.
(Because i don't today)

The top area of the photo isn't marked with green, because i don't know exactly where to mark it.
The line up to her head is made up. It's covered by feathers in this photo.

But I'd like some opinions on the black (bluekote-dyed) area between the 2 green lines. Is that a scab? Or what? It's hard. Solid.

Her skin is dyed yellow from the turmeric, but it sort of seems to have a surface film that is cracking ?

The pink/white moist skin along the edges of the green lines- is that new growth?

Shezadandy, I see what you mean about quills that can try to get ingrown.

 

[Birdmom2020]

I have been following this thread like crazy! I'm sorry I don't have any advice for you but I will say it does seem like she is getting better and you are doing great! Any chance the black might be the skin dying off to rebuild? I do know that I had a chicken back in the day that had a cut from trying to dust bathe in a spot in our yard that (I think,most likely) was a fire pit before I moved in that had a couple pc of glass and it turned black during healing then after about a week of that all the black came off and it was just a scab. Maybe this is the case here?

She is a beautiful bird! It's a really good thing she trusts you to do all that your doing without a big fight! Keep up the good work. I could be wrong on the black parts but it's just a guess considering what mine did. Good luck!