Please help! Hen with giant wound smells like burnt chicken

[Debbie292d]

Sorry to hear about your pullet.

I would first clean the wound really well, trim the feathers from around the wound and re-access it.
An antibiotic may be necessary, but often with a very good cleaning a wound may heal fine without it.

For this, I would actually wash the wound with some warm soapy water since the powder is on there, work slowly and see how much crusty material will slough off. After a good flushing of clean warm water, trim the feathers from the wound. Swab the wound very well with an antiseptic like Hibiclens (Chlorhexidine) or Povidone Iodine.
Take photos please so we can see how deep the wound is.

Since this is under the wing, I'd lean toward keeping the tissue a bit drier. That's a warm moist environment. A good swabbing with the Chlorhexidine or Povidone Iodine a couple of times a day will help this heal up, unless I see something different when you post photos after clean up.

I've had this type of injury under the wing and yes, it's likely due to a rooster spur or claw cutting the skin. Yes, mine did smell like cooked or burnt chicken with a hint of infection too. Odd smell. With mine, daily cleaning worked fine, but iirc, my hen's wound was not quite that deep.

Tylan/Tylosin would not be my choice as an antibiotic for wounds. It's very good for treating respiratory infections, enteritis, g.i. infections, etc.
IF Tylan was the ONLY thing I had, then I would use it in a crisis. Tylan has a dosage range of 10-40mg/kg given 3 times a day for 5 days. Injectable Tylan can be given orally instead of by injection, it's known to cause injection site necrosis. There is a Soluble Tylan that can also be ordered online, it goes in the drinking water. Again, it's not what I'd choose for a wound.

Penicillin would be a better choice if you have to give an antibiotic and can't wait on shipping of Amoxicillin. Amoxicillin would be my first choice, but it does have to be ordered online or if you have a vet, they may be able to write you a script.

Penicillin G would be an appropriate choice for wounds. Dosage for Penicillin G is .25ml injected into the breast muscle 1/4" deep once daily for 4 days, alternating sides. You will want a 20gauge needle and small syringe.

Amoxicillin dose is 57mg per pound of weight given orally twice a day for 7-10 days.
You can order it online HERE.

Thank you, @Wyorp Rock as I had found a prior post of yours explaining some of this and dosage for Tylan 50 to reply to her and my internet took a digger for about an hour. I'm glad as you were hugely more thorough here than the one I was going to paste here for her.

 

[Celcampbell23]

Is that an opened hole in the picture? Hard to make out with all the yellow stuff.

It is definitely a large gash but I don’t know if it’s quite a hole if that makes sense

Sorry to hear about your pullet.

I would first clean the wound really well, trim the feathers from around the wound and re-access it.
An antibiotic may be necessary, but often with a very good cleaning a wound may heal fine without it.

For this, I would actually wash the wound with some warm soapy water since the powder is on there, work slowly and see how much crusty material will slough off. After a good flushing of clean warm water, trim the feathers from the wound. Swab the wound very well with an antiseptic like Hibiclens (Chlorhexidine) or Povidone Iodine.
Take photos please so we can see how deep the wound is.

Since this is under the wing, I'd lean toward keeping the tissue a bit drier. That's a warm moist environment. A good swabbing with the Chlorhexidine or Povidone Iodine a couple of times a day will help this heal up, unless I see something different when you post photos after clean up.

I've had this type of injury under the wing and yes, it's likely due to a rooster spur or claw cutting the skin. Yes, mine did smell like cooked or burnt chicken with a hint of infection too. Odd smell. With mine, daily cleaning worked fine, but iirc, my hen's wound was not quite that deep.

Tylan/Tylosin would not be my choice as an antibiotic for wounds. It's very good for treating respiratory infections, enteritis, g.i. infections, etc.
IF Tylan was the ONLY thing I had, then I would use it in a crisis. Tylan has a dosage range of 10-40mg/kg given 3 times a day for 5 days. Injectable Tylan can be given orally instead of by injection, it's known to cause injection site necrosis. There is a Soluble Tylan that can also be ordered online, it goes in the drinking water. Again, it's not what I'd choose for a wound.

Penicillin would be a better choice if you have to give an antibiotic and can't wait on shipping of Amoxicillin. Amoxicillin would be my first choice, but it does have to be ordered online or if you have a vet, they may be able to write you a script.

Penicillin G would be an appropriate choice for wounds. Dosage for Penicillin G is .25ml injected into the breast muscle 1/4" deep once daily for 4 days, alternating sides. You will want a 20gauge needle and small syringe.

Amoxicillin dose is 57mg per pound of weight given orally twice a day for 7-10 days.
You can order it online HERE.

Thank you so so much!!! This gives me hope. I will bring her in tomorrow and give her a warm bath and clean it up and will post updated pics then. I will also go ahead and order amoxicillin just in case I need it and if not then to have on hand. I do have some penicillin but I think I will hold off until I get her cleaned up. Thank you again!

 

[Celcampbell23]

Thank you, @Wyorp Rock as I had found a prior post of yours explaining some of this and dosage for Tylan 50 to reply to her and my internet took a digger for about an hour. I'm glad as you were hugely more thorough here than the one I was going to paste here for her.

Thank you so much!!! I so appreciate you taking the time to look that up and for and tagging @Wyorp Rock

 

[Debbie292d]

Thank you so much!!! I so appreciate you taking the time to look that up and for and tagging @Wyorp Rock

We all just want to help you get your hen better and hope she does get better!!

 

[Wyorp Rock]

It is definitely a large gash but I don’t know if it’s quite a hole if that makes sense

Thank you so so much!!! This gives me hope. I will bring her in tomorrow and give her a warm bath and clean it up and will post updated pics then. I will also go ahead and order amoxicillin just in case I need it and if not then to have on hand. I do have some penicillin but I think I will hold off until I get her cleaned up. Thank you again!

Sounds like a plan.
I forgot to mention, do wash the feathers on the wing that are against her body, those will have some pus or yuck that have been worked into the feathers which will capture some of the odor, pus, etc. Or at least mine did, once I washed and cleaned her very well, the smell of infection was much less. After about day 3 of cleaning/swabbing with the Chlorhexidine, no odor and skin was granulating very well.

Everyone does things differently, mine was injured in the middle of Summer when it was very hot. I leave my birds with their flock for the most part. Since the wing covered her wound, the other hens didn't mess with the wound.
I did move the rooster to another pen just to avoid him mating her while she healed. It was not a punishment for him, just an avoidance of re-injury. I checked all the other hens to make sure their skin looked good. She was a smaller hen than the other, likely cut from a spur or toenail during dismount/mount. I did trim the rooster's nails and round them up a bit more smoothly with an emery board. He liked the attention Once she was healed, he was back with his ladies no problem.

 

[Celcampbell23]

Sounds like a plan.
I forgot to mention, do wash the feathers on the wing that are against her body, those will have some pus or yuck that have been worked into the feathers which will capture some of the odor, pus, etc. Or at least mine did, once I washed and cleaned her very well, the smell of infection was much less. After about day 3 of cleaning/swabbing with the Chlorhexidine, no odor and skin was granulating very well.

Everyone does things differently, mine was injured in the middle of Summer when it was very hot. I leave my birds with their flock for the most part. Since the wing covered her wound, the other hens didn't mess with the wound.
I did move the rooster to another pen just to avoid him mating her while she healed. It was not a punishment for him, just an avoidance of re-injury. I checked all the other hens to make sure their skin looked good. She was a smaller hen than the other, likely cut from a spur or toenail during dismount/mount. I did trim the rooster's nails and round them up a bit more smoothly with an emery board. He liked the attention Once she was healed, he was back with his ladies no problem.

@Wyorp Rock here are the images. Sorry for the delay. It looks like the gash goes downward and there was some dead skin holding in moisture and dirt or maybe pus. I got it cleaned out and removed as much of the dead skin as I felt comfortable removing without jeopardizing actually cutting her live tissue. It is honestly pretty gnarly and looks like it just missed her vent thankfully. But still not sure of severity or if she is out of the woods. She seemed to be getting some strength back already today and even fought me a couple times to get away which I took as a good sign. Having trouble adding images here so will add them in a new comment and tag you

 

[Celcampbell23]

@Wyorp Rock the first two are the most recent (right before I put on the iodine)

 

[WhoDatChick]

Is there any other antibiotic that will work? It looks like they have penicillin but every TSC in a 100 mile radius is out of Tylan 5

I would saturate that with antibiotic ointment.. it looks dry. I had some hens recently injured by a dog and I kept people antibiotic ointment on them. They healed wonderfully! @Wyorp Rock was so helpful to me! And some others I can’t think of at the moment.
Hope she heals quickly

 

[WhoDatChick]

@Wyorp Rock here are the images. Sorry for the delay. It looks like the gash goes downward and there was some dead skin holding in moisture and dirt or maybe pus. I got it cleaned out and removed as much of the dead skin as I felt comfortable removing without jeopardizing actually cutting her live tissue. It is honestly pretty gnarly and looks like it just missed her vent thankfully. But still not sure of severity or if she is out of the woods. She seemed to be getting some strength back already today and even fought me a couple times to get away which I took as a good sign. Having trouble adding images here so will add them in a new comment and tag you

Sorry, I didn’t read this post… maybe the spray would work best for this.Vetericyn…. I also used that and it was a miracle worker!

 

[Curnow]

I've had worse injuries and larger amounts of missing flesh from a raccoon attack be able to heal with the right care. I used LA 200 (Oxytetracycline) injection. I cleaned it well with warm antibacterial dawn & water. After patting dry I sprayed with Blu Kote and then spread Triple Antibiotic ointment liberally (literally globs) on the wounds. The hens injured in the attack were kept inside in a galvanized tank in my mudroom. The did not have much room to run around or be re injured. Keep it clean and re-apply ointment.

One was stripped of ALL her skin on the entire left side of her body and down the complete outside of her leg. It was meat, bare chicken meat!! One had a gaping hole where her neck met her body. You could see inside her! Another had all the skin stripped from her back and large gash wounds under wing an on back. I took a while, but they all healed and are now black with the flock.

The raccoon was able to fold back the vent on the side of the chicken house and go inside. I lost a few in the attack as well.

Give her time and care and should heal from this!