Mauled chicken - broken wing bone, skin gone muscle exposed

[My Chicken Friends]

I’m a newbie. One year. 4 chickens to 17. 2 large pens with fenced chicken yard. Area includes some woods. Red shouldered hawk attacked chicken during yard time. I sprayed her down to find all wounds. 2 gashes in neck. 3 in shoulder. Wing was shred to bone. Muscle tore up, top wing bone broken. Ine leg immobile, other weak. I’ve tended to it 3x a day now for a week. She is in my basement in a make shift hospital pen. Now that her legs have regained strength if I don’t wrap her feet up she pulls out of bandaging. She loves when it’s time to be unwrapped and sprayed. How long do I keep spraying and wrapping her wing.

 

[Sagey_7878]

Can you take her to a vet? I’m so sorry this happened. I suggest wrapping it to let it heal and prevent infection, spray centrigen to stop infections (or another similar product).

 

[My Chicken Friends]

Thank you. The vet out here will not take chickens. I checked before I ever bought chickens. Out here people would have just shot the chicken, Or they would let the hawk finish her. So I’m doing my best with wrapping her and spraying it 3x a day to keep away infection. I don’t know how healed it can get given how badly mauled it is. Anyone know when to stop wrapping it.

 

[sunrise.superman]

The spraying...hydrotherapy...can be very helpful if she loves it...the spray like you get from a little sink sprayer can stimulate blood flow and aid healing. Silvadene cream can be helpful in keeping infection under control and help healing by second intention...the filling in and scarring over of missing tissue, Telfa pads are good non-stick dressings if you can keep them on. Exposed bone is prone to infection, but you seem to have kept her happy enough for a week.

 

[glassdragonfly]

Wow! She is a lucky girl,both to have survived the hawk and to have you taking care of her! I would be doing all the things you are. Keep cleaning and wrapping it up until closed. It's going to take a while.

 

[Pigpye]

Can you post a picture for advise, hard to say how to treat without pic

 

[Sagey_7878]

Can you post a picture for advise, hard to say how to treat without pic

There is an image attached.

 

[Ebony Rose]

You can bury a baby aspirin or two in a hard boiled egg yolk for pain; I think it's safe to say that after a week of recovery that she's probably not bleeding internally so the aspirin shouldn't be a clotting (or lack of clotting) issue. Dosage is 25mg per pound of bird, so a single baby aspirin is enough for just over 3 pounds, two baby aspirins for about a 6 1/2 pound bird. You can use adult aspirin, but they come in larger sizes (350mg and 500mg) that would need to be cut down to dosage and not all adult aspirins are buffered and some are coated.

 

[Pennys Mama]

I’m a newbie. One year. 4 chickens to 17. 2 large pens with fenced chicken yard. Area includes some woods. Red shouldered hawk attacked chicken during yard time. I sprayed her down to find all wounds. 2 gashes in neck. 3 in shoulder. Wing was shred to bone. Muscle tore up, top wing bone broken. Ine leg immobile, other weak. I’ve tended to it 3x a day now for a week. She is in my basement in a make shift hospital pen. Now that her legs have regained strength if I don’t wrap her feet up she pulls out of bandaging. She loves when it’s time to be unwrapped and sprayed. How long do I keep spraying and wrapping her wing.

Just keep doing what you're doing. It will take a while for new tissue to fill in the area, but it will in time. I'd trim all of the feathers off that wing to ease her efforts by removing as much weight as possible from it, that might help a bandage stay on better too. Are you using sports tape/wrap that stuff that stretches & sticks to itself? I don't know if you can get any Granulex spray, spray a bit in medicine cup and mix with a bit of triple antibiotic ointment has helped many wounds heal in my nursing career.
@Eggcessive @Wyorp Rock @casportpony

The spraying...hydrotherapy...can be very helpful if she loves it...the spray like you get from a little sink sprayer can stimulate blood flow and aid healing. Silvadene cream can be helpful in keeping infection under control and help healing by second intention...the filling in and scarring over of missing tissue, Telfa pads are good non-stick dressings if you can keep them on.

Agree with this as well as the response of dosing with a baby aspirin, at least before dressing changes.

 

[GodofPecking]

Pain is different in prey animals compared to predator animals like us. They don't react to pain or consider pain the same way we do. They have different brain wiring. For us, making a fuss over a small pain is perhaps helpful, but it is not the case for a prey animal, as showing, or BEING, in pain will get you singled out. I'm sure they know and feel pain, but it is different to us. I wouldn't think that pills are very meaningful. Gaping wounds do not stop chickens going about their daily lives. It's weird and different to us. Fixing the cause would help more than treating the symptoms.

Looking at the depth of that wound I would be pressured to think that amputating the wing would be best, WHILE doing the amputation, you'd want to leave enough skin and leave it in a shape that is going to be easy to seal up or at least hold together. perhaps the same kinds of tapes that are used in hospitals. Try putting a piece of tape on either side of the wound that you make and then using smaller pieces to bridge the gap. It would make it easier than a single piece which will pull the wound to pieces if removed or refreshed, but two pieces one on each side may suffer less problems in this regard.

As a rule, things heal best by drying out first, that's wounds in flesh I would think, rather than down to the exposed bone like this one, closing something over the bone so that the flesh can heal would be important because it's hard to make new flesh and cover over the bone.

You'll need to bind her down so she doesn't move about while you work, using cloth, rags, and so on, keeping her from watching you. You may save her life, but she may not forgive you without a lot of work, if she forgives at all, but that may not be important.

Luckily people have generally studied chicken anatomy in some depth at the university of dinnertime.

It is hard to know if you can save her, because her system is open to everything and it can and has already got in. She seems to need something in the way of amputation, otherwise you'd be looking at making her comfortable in a cloth, sitting in the bottom of a hole in the garden, where she'll be ok with you eventually covering her over with the cloth so you can bring down a large stone as fast as you can, removing her ability to feel pain and sending her on her way. I do hope you'll be ok, and I do hope her spirit will be ok whatever happens.

The best way to stop the killing by ground predators is to be pro-active with TRAPS, I've built one with a $10 electric eye infrared beam as the trigger and a secondhand car central locking actuator to drop the door, the $12 solar regulator that does the solar thing with the 12v battery also puts out voltage only during darkness when chooks are asleep. It prevents cats and foxes taking such a toll on the chickens and chicks as once they did, I do not know what would help with AERIAL PREDATORS except making certain they have places to hide where they can only go on foot, bushes usually do this, perhaps your place is missing bushes in the coop. If the coop is that small, it should be easy to net.