ThisBirdHasFlown
In the Brooder
Hi everyone,
I'll cut straight to the chase and will provide the longer backstory at the end of this post for context.
Over the last three days I have been noticing that the skin around the eyes of my 2-week-old gosling has become red and slightly inflamed. The third eyelids (Nictitating membrane) are constantly showing a little bit in the corner of the eye and the eyes just don't seem right. It started off on just one side but now seems to affect both. It doesn't show as clearly when she's dry, but when I give her a bath it's REALLY obvious and you can tell that the whole skin on her face and neck seems inflamed:
I read that the reddish skin might be normal while her juvenile feathers are growing in and might be nothing to worry about but since it goes together with the red and seemingly inflamed eyes I am quite concerned.
Here is another close up of her eye:
Now some backstory and possible connections:
Our little cutie is an orphaned Canada Goose and we found her when she was a day or two old. Her face was covered in ticks when we took her in (we removed 12 in total!) but she has been doing amazingly putting on weight every day and always in a happy mood.
At day 9 she gave us quite the health scare and we had to go to the vet because she must have eaten something toxic. We are still not sure what it was, perhaps some piece of metal, but all of the sudden she started running to us in the yard, panicking, screeching, drinking lots of water and then went very lethargic quite quickly. We immediately rushed her to the vet who confirmed that her temperature, air ways and heart rate all seemed normal and all they could do was give her a pain medication jab. The following night was rough, she was clearly not right, seemingly having tummy cramps and very strange poop.
We were very worried that she might have "hardware disease" and internal heavy metal poisoning and made sure she stayed hydrated. Miraculously she was fine the next morning and 24h later you could never tell that anything was wrong with her. No more signs of any of that in the following week. I don't know if any of this is related to our current problem but just in case it might be I wanted to mention it.
Fast forward to three days ago when we noticed the eye discolouration and she also has been having blocked sinuses way more often since then. We encourage her to clear her bill with daily warm baths and deep water dishes but it seems like there's been something stuck there for a couple of days now. Every once in a while you can hear it rattle when she breathes and it does seem to bother her, although most of the time she acts completely normal with lots of energy etc.
She will be going to a new place with a pond in a couple of days where she will have another canada gosling by her side who also got abandoned but I would feel so much better about giving her away if I knew that she was in good health. Am I being paranoid about the skin and eyes and is this nothing to worry about?
Also, I should mention, keeping a Canada Goose in the UK is NOT illegal unlike in the US. In fact, it would be illegal to release it back into the wild at this point
Any and all suggestions and help would be appreciated!!
I'll cut straight to the chase and will provide the longer backstory at the end of this post for context.
Over the last three days I have been noticing that the skin around the eyes of my 2-week-old gosling has become red and slightly inflamed. The third eyelids (Nictitating membrane) are constantly showing a little bit in the corner of the eye and the eyes just don't seem right. It started off on just one side but now seems to affect both. It doesn't show as clearly when she's dry, but when I give her a bath it's REALLY obvious and you can tell that the whole skin on her face and neck seems inflamed:
I read that the reddish skin might be normal while her juvenile feathers are growing in and might be nothing to worry about but since it goes together with the red and seemingly inflamed eyes I am quite concerned.
Here is another close up of her eye:
Now some backstory and possible connections:
Our little cutie is an orphaned Canada Goose and we found her when she was a day or two old. Her face was covered in ticks when we took her in (we removed 12 in total!) but she has been doing amazingly putting on weight every day and always in a happy mood.
At day 9 she gave us quite the health scare and we had to go to the vet because she must have eaten something toxic. We are still not sure what it was, perhaps some piece of metal, but all of the sudden she started running to us in the yard, panicking, screeching, drinking lots of water and then went very lethargic quite quickly. We immediately rushed her to the vet who confirmed that her temperature, air ways and heart rate all seemed normal and all they could do was give her a pain medication jab. The following night was rough, she was clearly not right, seemingly having tummy cramps and very strange poop.
We were very worried that she might have "hardware disease" and internal heavy metal poisoning and made sure she stayed hydrated. Miraculously she was fine the next morning and 24h later you could never tell that anything was wrong with her. No more signs of any of that in the following week. I don't know if any of this is related to our current problem but just in case it might be I wanted to mention it.
Fast forward to three days ago when we noticed the eye discolouration and she also has been having blocked sinuses way more often since then. We encourage her to clear her bill with daily warm baths and deep water dishes but it seems like there's been something stuck there for a couple of days now. Every once in a while you can hear it rattle when she breathes and it does seem to bother her, although most of the time she acts completely normal with lots of energy etc.
She will be going to a new place with a pond in a couple of days where she will have another canada gosling by her side who also got abandoned but I would feel so much better about giving her away if I knew that she was in good health. Am I being paranoid about the skin and eyes and is this nothing to worry about?
Also, I should mention, keeping a Canada Goose in the UK is NOT illegal unlike in the US. In fact, it would be illegal to release it back into the wild at this point
Any and all suggestions and help would be appreciated!!
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