b0ckb0ckg0rl
In the Brooder
- Aug 8, 2020
- 12
- 46
- 46
A few months ago, we lost a 4yo Japanese Bantam rooster to some sort of mystery illness and I was wondering if anyone here has any idea of what it might have been. I wasn't there to see it as I was abroad, so I don't have any pictures.
My mother noticed the beginning of what seemed like fowlpox, so she took him to the vet to get topical treatment. Our chickens are our first ever chickens, so we didn't really know what to do about it. The vet inspected the chicken and gave us a topical, although I don't know what, and told my mother to come back in three days for a check-up. On that day, when she picked him up, she noticed a nasty smell and he had a large patch of necrotic skin on his tummy. It wasn't there before, as the vet inspected him thoroughly and didn't notice anything before. It was hard, black and seemed to go deeper inside. The vet said he'd never encountered anything like it before. We had the rooster put down because we didn't really know what it was and didn't want to run the risk of spreading it to the rest of the flock if it was contagious, and although he didn't seem at all bothered and went about his happy little chicken life, this seemed like it would most likely have killed him anyway.
Has anyone ever seen this before? There were no maggots or anything and apparently it was dry, so it wasn't flies. The only idea we had, after some asking around, was perhaps an exotic insect bite. I live in Western-Europe and we don't really have anything around here that causes such a reaction, but we've definitely heard of a couple of instances of people getting bitten by exotic insects and being sent to hospital. It happened to someone down the road a couple of years back. It seems so unlikely, but it was all we could come up with.
My mother noticed the beginning of what seemed like fowlpox, so she took him to the vet to get topical treatment. Our chickens are our first ever chickens, so we didn't really know what to do about it. The vet inspected the chicken and gave us a topical, although I don't know what, and told my mother to come back in three days for a check-up. On that day, when she picked him up, she noticed a nasty smell and he had a large patch of necrotic skin on his tummy. It wasn't there before, as the vet inspected him thoroughly and didn't notice anything before. It was hard, black and seemed to go deeper inside. The vet said he'd never encountered anything like it before. We had the rooster put down because we didn't really know what it was and didn't want to run the risk of spreading it to the rest of the flock if it was contagious, and although he didn't seem at all bothered and went about his happy little chicken life, this seemed like it would most likely have killed him anyway.
Has anyone ever seen this before? There were no maggots or anything and apparently it was dry, so it wasn't flies. The only idea we had, after some asking around, was perhaps an exotic insect bite. I live in Western-Europe and we don't really have anything around here that causes such a reaction, but we've definitely heard of a couple of instances of people getting bitten by exotic insects and being sent to hospital. It happened to someone down the road a couple of years back. It seems so unlikely, but it was all we could come up with.
