Please Help! My hen has been attacked and has an injury on her body on her side. How can I treat it?

[Eggcessive]

Posting a picture can be done by going to "reply" and to the 5th box click on the mountains "insert picture"icon. Try putting her in the coop while you are there in the morning to see if she will eat. Then take her back out. Try it a couple of times a day, or put her in a cage in the coop so that she can see them. Cranberry juice or a bit of jello water in the tetracycline may make it more appealing to her, since it is bitter. If she won't eat scrambled eggs chopped up, I'm not sure what she would like, but she might eat them in competition with her buddies. If all else fails you may need to tube feed her. Aquarium tubing from WalMart and a 60 ml syringe will work as a temporary tube feeding setup. Burn one end of the tubing to round off sharp edges before inserting into esophagus. Here's a link if you need it: https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/805728/go-team-tube-feeding

 

[chicknmania]

We had a similar situation awhile ago. We think it was a raccoon that grabbed our hen and she pulled away. We used Veterycin wound spray we got at the feed store, it's pricey although you can use it on any animal and that way you do not have to bathe or use neosporin either if it's a large wound. And it lasts awhile. Anyway, she did recover, we kept her separate from the others til her wound healed (which was pretty superficial, she was mostly just a bloody mess from broken feathers)so that the others wouldn't be tempted to peck at it.

Try applesauce mixed with her food. If that doesn't work you will have to tube feed her but it's not as difficult as it sounds. You can't wait long, they must eat and drink, that is the most important thing, or they will not survive.

 

[Harry Rooster]

Hi all! Update on my attacked hen. I couldn't get her to eat on her own, so I did what I had done before with my sick cockerel a while back, I fed her with a dropper. Gave her Electrolyte water and gave her yogurt and also her medicine in the dropper mixed with the Electrolyte water and sometimes in the yogurt. She did eat it when I did it that way, but not a whole lot at once. Cleaned her wounds with diluted Betadine then put on Neosporin or Polysporin every night. She was an excellent patient. After a few days of feeding her that way, She finally started feeling better, so I put her on the floor in front of her food and water and she did eat some, took longer for her to drink water, seemed uninterested in the water, so I just kept feeding her with the dropper too and also the water that way. Now she is doing great, eating on her own and drinking as normal, wounds are scabbing over and looking great. Have stopped giving her the antibiotics for a few about a week now. I had started off with the Tetracycline for a few days, then remembered that I had some left over Cephelexin (?), that I had from my presc. for my abscessed tooth, so I changed her to that, which seemed to work much better and faster. I am still letting her sleep in the hospital pen at night, but put her out in the pen alone during the day to run around and get some sun and fresh air. She is doing wonderfully! I'm so glad. She is so special and sweet. The wound was really pretty bad, was scared that she wouldn't recover, especially since I didn't find that gash until about 3 days later, but did in time anyway. I am going to try to make her a chicken apron to wear. Did make her one out of a piece of felt, but obviously didn't do it right cause she had it off in just a few minutes. She will need one though when I put her back out with her sister, if her sister gets well from whatever it is wrong with her. Don't know what those episodes are that she is displaying. I'm at a loss really what could be wrong with her. It's almost like she's having an Epilectic seizure of some kind at night. Straightening out her legs and acting like she can't stand or sit and breathing hard. I don't know. Going to put symptoms and conditions on other thread I started about her. Anyway, Little Pretty Girl with the attack wound, is doing GREAT!!! Thank you all very much for your invaluable help to me through this, and all my other chicken emergencies. Don't know what I would do without y'all!! Thanks so much y'all! Be very blessed! Please check out the thread about the other hen that is her sister, that I'm having problems with, so you can see the description of her displays that she is doing, and see if you know what the problem could be. Don't know what's wrong with her, and could use your help on that situation too. Thanks!!

 

[Harry Rooster]

Update on both chickens (sisters). Both chickens are doing fine now and the one that had been attacked is acting like normal. Her wounds are scabbing over nicely. They were pretty bad, so it's taking a long time for those holes to close up and fill in. The other one that I think ate the rat poison is also doing fine now too. I went and got some vitamin K3 cause I couldn't find the other K vitamin, so I gave her that and fed her with a dropper for about 2 days. Both are in great shape and acting like normal now. Thank you all very much for your help in my distress. I love my chickens and they are really like pets to me, so when something happens to them it really disturbs me and I want to do everything I can for them.
I now have a new problem. We have lost several chickens to a predator that we can't catch and don't know what it is. It comes in the morning and in the middle of the day too. Came all the way into the pen and into the chicken house yesterday morning in broad daylight about 8:00am and got my mother hen and one of her only 2 babies. I have put the baby that escaped in a carrier in my shop now. Don't have an idea what it could be.

 

[Eggcessive]

Glad to hear they are better. It could be a raccoon, dog, fox, or a feral cat. Time to lock up the chickens, and get a raccoon trap out, a game cam or both, and find out what you are dealing with. Make sure that you have hardware cloth wire or heavier wire on your run.

 

[Harry Rooster]

We did wire it up with the small poultry wire and put hardware cloth on the windows and made a door that we close and lock every night now. I don't go let them out in the chicken yard until around 8:00am since some of it was happening in the early morning. But we didn't have the other chicken house wired in, just the run. That's the one that it got into the house yesterday morning and got the hen and baby. We put a door on last night and are going to do the same. It has a dirt floor though and if it's a digger, it could dig in if it wanted to. We have put out coon traps and have caught 1 huge male coon and took it off to the hunting club, which is miles and miles away from here, caught 1 wild tom cat, also taken to the hunting club and 1 baby skunk, just let it go back where it was. The deaths have happened since we caught all of those though, so that wasn't what it was. The last thing we caught was the coon and that was about 2 weeks ago. We have 3 traps out. I didn't think that coons would come out in the broad daylight into a chicken pen.

 

[chicknmania]

They will, and it might be smart enough to avoid a trap. Here's some things that we have done, when we have predator problems.
Get a radio if you can run it on an extension cord or something so it's right in the chicken house. Put it on a timer, or better still just go out there and turn it on and off at random times throughout the day. Try to make it the same volume as a human voice talking to another human, or a little louder. Turn it to a talk radio station. I find that it helps if I keep changing the times of day that it's on and off. And move the radio around to different locations, too.

Game camera s a great idea if you can get one.

When we had the problem with the foxes last summer, I would go out to visit the chickens same way, at random times throughout the day, and never at the same time.
I always talked a lot and made a lot of noise when I was out there. I also drove our Gator out there sometimes, or the car, tapping the horn, blaring the car radio. Sometimes I I took pan lids out there, and would walk around smashing them, and flashing them in the sun. Now, I work out of the house, so it was easier for me to do that, but I do think it helped, although it was time consuming.

We also have a "bird banger" or "bird bomb" gun. WE had to get a permit to have it. It's for scaring away problem birds, but it works well for all predators, just don't use it too often, only if you're pretty sure there's really one around. It doesn't hurt the predator but it does help to scare them off. Failing that, you could try just ordinary Black Cat fireworks, or bottle rockets. Or anything you have that makes a loud explosive noise and has that gunpowder smell. Just randomly shoot some of those off once in a while, whenever you think the predator might be around.

And lastly, there's a thing that I want to get, although it's about 180.00, it's free shipping. It's a solar powered, motion detector activated sprinkler, that also makes noise. It would be hard to use in certain situations because the chickens would set it off, but I'm thinking of getting one for our garden this summer, or even just to set outside the barn at night. It stores the solar energy so it will still work after dark. You could set it outside the chicken run or house, and it might work.

What are you using for bait in the live traps? Glad you let the baby skunk go.

Do you have a dog? Maybe try some Guineas? Get those geese over there!

 

[chicknmania]

You can lay hardware cloth down, too, around the run, or chicken house, and weight it down. Really better to bury it, so that the predator can't dig under.