Lavender Orpington with a possible sinus infection?

[corviidae]

Hi everyone! I’ve got a lavender orpington pullet who seems to have swelling on one side of her face. She’s one of our newer chickens and she’s about 12 weeks old.

I do want to note that she seems notorious for having things…wrong, with her. Could never figure out what it was. Smallest of the four, grew up with a TON of stress bars, nasty feather cyst which resolved on its own. She’s also had swelling before, but it went down after we treated her for the infected feather follicle a couple weeks ago. We had to discontinue the duramycin injections because of a medical emergency, so we couldn’t finish the course we had planned. Is it safe to just give her a week course of intramuscular injections of the antibiotic on the chance of it being an infection?

We can’t see a vet, and have none that’ll see chickens within a 3 hour radius. I attached photos of both sides of her face.

EDIT:
- no sneezing noted
- no discharge
- behaving normally. Eating and drinking normally
- poor feather quality (they’re individually tattered/ragged, but i hear this is a lavender gene complication?)

 

[Wyorp Rock]

I don't really see anything that yells sinus infection, I would look inside her beak for any lesions, mucous or canker.
Check her over for lice/mites while you're at it.

The lump may be from the sinus, but it could also be a bug bite, possibly something going on with the follicle if you are having issues with that.

I wouldn't give any antibiotics unless she's showing obvious signs of infection.

Lots of stress marks, poor feathering, poor genetics. Try deworming and treating for Coccidiosis. Marek's disease comes to mind with the follicle issue. I'm not a genetics person so ask on the genetics forums about feathering. If she's not up to par with health at this age, then I wouldn't breed forward with her.

 

[corviidae]

I don't really see anything that yells sinus infection, I would look inside her beak for any lesions, mucous or canker.
Check her over for lice/mites while you're at it.

The lump may be from the sinus, but it could also be a bug bite, possibly something going on with the follicle if you are having issues with that.

I wouldn't give any antibiotics unless she's showing obvious signs of infection.

Lots of stress marks, poor feathering, poor genetics. Try deworming and treating for Coccidiosis. Marek's disease comes to mind with the follicle issue. I'm not a genetics person so ask on the genetics forums about feathering. If she's not up to par with health at this age, then I wouldn't breed forward with her.

I neglected to mention it was on her back, my bad. It seemed to just be a feather cyst. It’s healing now and has no signs of infection after we removed the feather causing the cyst, but I wouldn’t mind trying deworming. After her first round of antibiotics to control when we thought the cyst WAS infected (that we had to discontinue), the facial swelling went down but it’s only now starting to come back. Maybe it’s timing and she’s just unlucky with bugs or getting pecked.

First course of action, I’ll talk with my partner about deworming and check for mites or for any mucus in her beak. I’ll also go to the genetics forum. Thank you.

 

[HeatherKellyB]

poor feather quality (they’re individually tattered/ragged, but i hear this is a lavender gene complication?)

The shredder gene. My self blue aka lavender hen also has it.
Edited to add that it's also called wing patch

 

[corviidae]

The shredder gene. My self blue aka lavender hen also has it.

Do stress bars also come into play with this? I posted in the genetic forum. I’d love to talk about this more as I’ve never heard of this until today.

 

[HeatherKellyB]

I really don't know much about the relation between stress bars and wing patch. I tagged some members that you'll enjoy chatting with about the genetics. I look forward to following along as I'm still learning

 

[corviidae]

I really don't know much about the relation between stress bars and wing patch. I tagged some members that you'll enjoy chatting with about the genetics. I look forward to following along as I'm still learning

Thanks! I appreciate that. I’ll update here as I find out if Tofus just a genetic mess and got bit by a bug or if there’s actually something wrong lol

 

[corviidae]

Update: no lesion or canker of any sort in her beak. No mites either. It’s the same side and same spots on her face as a couple weeks ago…maybe she’s just really unlucky with getting bit.

Feathering was confirmed to be genetic because of her color.