Injury to base of beak -- possible trauma or frostbite? No big deal?

[HeatherFeather]

Ok....no beak rubbing at all here- BUT one of the girls who is suddenly most affected by the whitish comb at the base of the beak, is definately shaking her head alot.

I remember looking at her and thinking, gee that's weird. why the heck is she doing that so much. and then shrugged it off. That was just today.

Our temps have been hovering just around freezing lately with the days being warmer than the nights, so for farenheit I think we're getting up to 37 in the day.

I was thinking about fungus, and had hoped that my salve would take that away, but I suppose I could use something stronger...with more tea tree oil perhaps...or even gentian violet. I really hesitate to go that far as those are both really strong substances....

I'll try the chicken doctor tommorow.

 

[Noble Rooster]

Thanks for the update, HeatherFeather, and for the suggestion about the Chicken Doctor, Seminolewind. I will definitely send an e-mail.

I carefully observed everyone this morning while I cleaned, fed, etc., and things seem to have stabilized for now -- beaks look no worse (but no better), there's still head shaking but ever-so-slightly less. My liquid permethrin will hopefully arrive tomorrow and make it a bit easier to get some bug-killer on their heads. I checked for mites around everyone's vents last night and saw nothing (thank goodness), but did get a lot of curious "Hey, why are you messing with our fluffybutts??" looks.

HeatherFeather, I'll let you know what I hear back from the Chicken Doctor -- will you do the same?

 

[HeatherFeather]

Yep, ok. I haven't sent an email yet actually-I've been insanely busy and just keeping my head above water to balance reg. life with chickens

I put DE directly onto the heads of the head shakers yesterday am, and rubbed it in and today-very minimal shaking. They did a bit, but not nearly as much as they had been. So I repeated today. With daily lubing of the beaks and combs, they seem to have stabilized here too.

I gave a really thorough exam of the feet and legs to my entire flock this am, and there does appear to be a very few raised leg scales on the ankles of a few chooks-the ones that were shaking their heads no doubt-hmmmmm.

With that info, I am definately suspecting scaly leg and beak mites and that they just presented on the beaks first due to that area being already a little compromised from the cold/humidity.

tonight during roosting, I will rub down all their legs with vaseline, and hope to get some paraffin oil tommorrow if they have it at the feed store.

To make things even MORE interesting:

My girl in the basement had a breakthrough yesterday. Apparently she has more than one issue. She must have had some kind of blockage which put her off of food. She pooped (or maybe puked?) out this 'thing'.....which is comprised of mostly decomposing hay. It was nasty. I can see why she wasn't eating. I've heard stories of animals that just aren't that in tune with things and eat the wrong thing all the time and I hope that isn't her....but we'll see.

Since then, she's eaten quite a bit of layer feed and scratch, but still isn't drinking much. I'm going to start a new thread about her tonight and post pics of the poop.

 

[Noble Rooster]

Thanks, HeatherFeather. I'm glad your basement girl had a breakthrough -- sounds like an impacted crop maybe? And so good to hear that the mite treatment seems to be helping. My liquid permethrin arrives tomorrow so I'll be able to give everyone a thorough treatment and will keep you posted on what I find.

I did send an e-mail yesterday -- if you like you can PM me and I can tell you more about it.