Need surgical advice, please

[australorpchick]

This past Saturday, my 6-7mos. BR pullet suddenly had a swollen area underneath her ear, I took her home to keep an eye on it and started giving her terramycin in her water (approved by vet). The swelling has not gone down. It does not seem to bother her. She's eating, drinking and pooping fine. Her eyes & ears are clear and she's carrying her tail high. She's very active and noisey, which leads to my dilema. My flock lives 10 minutes away from my house, because I live in an HOA neighborhood that does not allow poultry. So Pepper is currently hiding out on my back porch, which faces my nosey neighbor. I would not put it past this neighbor to complain to the HOA. My chicken vet doesn't have an opening to lance the area until Thursday 05/28. If I insist on having it done earlier, I'll get charged the emergency rate. The vet also wants me to leave her there overnight at least one night. I've read many post where people operate on their chickens, should I go ahead and lance, clean and stitch this myself? Would anyone recommend trying something else, like Tylan? Here's her pic.

 

[LynneP]

I'd be inclined to wait. The swelling may burst and then you can clean her up. The risk of doing this is introducing bacteria and dealing with another type of infection. As a precaution you could daub it with blue lotion to disinfect the area, so that if it does rupture the skin is somewhat protected already. Besides, she will likely flinch if you work there, and the area is so small and with so many vulnerable body parts.

Do you think it could be a buried tick?

 

[australorpchick]

I'm not too familiar with ticks (I'm from the beaches of SoCal), but I've been checking for anything bug-like and I don't see anything. The flock was dewormed 2 1/2 weeks ago and bathed in Sevin & DE last weekend. My Lynn-hen was acting like a horrible bully for a couple of weeks, so it could also be beak-inflicted, but I didn't see any cuts/wounds either. It was just so sudden. I do a physical appearance check at least 3 times a week. This just appeared out of nowhere. The flock gets fed Layena pellets and oyster shells, along with weekly treats consisting of a mixture of scratch, bokchoy, watermelon, canteloupe, yogurt, a little bread, ham, bologne or bacon, peas and corn. Every once in awhile they get an Arby's roast beef sandwich or left over talapia. I know...they eat better than a lot of people. They're are allowed a free-range hour at least three times a week otherwise they're kept in their coop/run.

Do you think it would be okay to return her to the flock (and keep an eye on her)? She really doesn't like to be cooped up in the XL dog kennel and gets a little stir-crazy.

 

[Milliestwo]

You may be dealing with an abcess and if so then you would want to use warm moist compresses as many times a day as you can as this will help any soreness that she may be feeling in that area. It may also help to bring it to a head if that is indeed what it is.

I was a vet tech /surgical asst for 17 years and that is what we did for some of the abcesses that werent ready to lance yet and sometimes you will need to put a penrose drain in place to keep it open for drainage along with antibiotics and that usually stays in place for three to five days until the drainage stops.

She could have scratched her self with her nails and introduced a bacteria into the scratch and causing the abcess if that is what it is, it also could be an inpacted crop and that would require surgery as well.

If you have no experience with using surgical procedures then please don't try as you can make things much worse than they could be . If she seems happy and eating and pooping then wait for the vet. I would put her inside like in a basement area until you get her there or in another room,you can put down plastic drop cloths like for painting and put the cage in the milddle of it so that things don't get too messy or smelly and put a bed of thick news papers down inside the cage so that you can change them mutiple times a day as needed. I do this with chicks but they are in a playpen and it works great for me and no smell.
Hope this has helped.
Linda
Silver Ash Silkies(Put a little SAS in your silkies)

 

[australorpchick]

Thanks for the compress advice Linda, I'll definitely try that. Unfortunately, we don't have a basement and my parents and quite a bit of their belongings are staying with us for a year, so we're kind of short on extra space. Not to mention we have relatives coming on Wednesday to stay with us for 4 nights. What timing!