Meat Chicken w. Cut on Neck

[gatrapper]

Hey Y'all,

Woke up this morning and fed the meat birds right at dawn. I come back 2 hours later and I noticed that one had a bloody neck.

My fiance and I took her inside and washed her neck off in the tub. It revealed this small little gash about the size of a BB.

There is only one tiny little spot where an animal could possibly reach its hand inside the coop, but I seriously doubt that happened.

I was thinking that maybe during the feeding frenzy she got stepped on and a nail of another chicken cut her.

We cleaned the wound with betadine and put some corn starch on the cut to stop the blood.

What do y'all think caused this?

 

[gillnpunky]

a parasite??

 

[Wyorp Rock]

Hey Y'all,

Woke up this morning and fed the meat birds right at dawn. I come back 2 hours later and I noticed that one had a bloody neck.

My fiance and I took her inside and washed her neck off in the tub. It revealed this small little gash about the size of a BB.

There is only one tiny little spot where an animal could possibly reach its hand inside the coop, but I seriously doubt that happened.

I was thinking that maybe during the feeding frenzy she got stepped on and a nail of another chicken cut her.

We cleaned the wound with betadine and put some corn starch on the cut to stop the blood.

What do y'all think caused this?

Your theory about a chicken claw is plausible.
Could be from a beak.
Is there anything in the coop/run that is sticking out that it could have gotten injured on?
Keep an eye on it for any infection, generally they heal fairly quickly.

 

[gatrapper]

Seems to be healing up pretty good. We washed it again and re-applied betadine tonight. Chicken is acting like nothing ever happened.

It just looks like a small little cut that just went through the skin. If the chicken heals up fine, would it still be okay to butcher and eat even if it got cut from metal or the smallest chance that it was an animal (cat, coon, etc).

 

[Wyorp Rock]

Seems to be healing up pretty good. We washed it again and re-applied betadine tonight. Chicken is acting like nothing ever happened.

It just looks like a small little cut that just went through the skin. If the chicken heals up fine, would it still be okay to butcher and eat even if it got cut from metal or the smallest chance that it was an animal (cat, coon, etc).

I have never raised meat chickens so I'm not sure how to answer the question about whether or not it's ok to butcher/eat after injury. I would think it depends on what caused the injury and whether or not the wound gets infected.

There are plenty of folks here on BYC that are more knowledgeable than I on the subject of meat birds. You may want to pose that concern/question to the good people on the meat birds forum. I'm sure they would be happy to give you some insight.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/f/21/meat-birds-etc