red marks/scabs on corner of mouth

[wdoyle1980]

6month old White Leghorn hen had always a little pencil-thin red around the corners of her mouth - really only noticed it when her comb and waddle started coming in. I thought it was a more pronounced than the others we have.

It might have started yesterday or a few days, but I only really noticed it tonight. the red is a bit larger and has a little dark/scabby look to it. At first I thought she had maybe tried to eat a poo or something and just needed to by wiped off. wiped face with papertowel and nothing changed. Wet papertowel - same. picked her up and tipped her upside down and brought her to the sink. ran coon water from the tap on my finger and gently rubbed the marks, making sure not to touch her eye or let the water run into her eye/nose, in case it's infectious. no change to the shape/color of the marks. staying up googling has just made me a hypercondriac now

I pushed/prodded the marks. didn't seem to pop or ooze/bleed. she wasn't too happy with the pressure/proding, but didn't seem to 'hurt' her. She's still been very active running around my office when we let her out. she was eating her feed and was eating some brussels sprouts I gave her tonight.



clear bright eyes, lots of fussing/head shaking while I was trying to hold her still for cellphone picture. Last image has her eye closed between me rubbing the side/back of her head to get her to rest/calm and the flicker of the flash. i think the specks by her eye are just dust/debris.

She is the only one that is in her own cage - the other two pick on her and peck her comb/waddle bloody! They get along fine outside of the cage when they're socializing around the office room or chasing each other through the tiled living room

I don't plan on rotating them or socializing until we figure out what this is. I don't want it spreading.

I have been feeding them Nutrena layer pellets for the last month+ the pellets are a bit big for these small leghorns, but the RIR really loves em. All three like to scoop and toss the pellets out of the bowl into the grating below. I have been trying to reclaim some of the piles of feed that don't have any feces or broken egg in it, as they only recently started to really WASTE the pellets (at first the waste was almost 0 switching from the crumbles (messy) to the pellets (less mess).

after some further googling, I opened up her mouth and peeked inside. doesn't look like these marks go into the mouth - just outside. nice clean pink upper palette, with little ridges/'teeth' things. no obstructions/marks/wounds.

any suggestions, ideas, or necessary treatments?

 

[wdoyle1980]

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[wdoyle1980]

I used a brand new wood 'nail cleaner' - pointy on one end, wedge on the other to help clean her up. i used the pointy end to help clear out her nose/sinus. i didn't poke hard and quickly backed off when she started to squirm. kept my fingers close to the point to make sure she didn't thrash and jab herself. looks like most of the stuff on/in her nose was flaky skin+dust+oyster shell dust. a good a few big dusty boogies out of both her sides.

Her mouth pretty much looks the same as before. I was able to use the wedge end of the stick to see if i could lift a scab or anything. it seemed to be a pretty solid mass. a few little* flakes came up but no oozing or blood or anything. just more red mass. I put some neosporin on a qtip and slathered around her mouth and around the skin leading up to her nose; trying to keep it away from her mouth/tongue area. checked in her mouth again - nothing appears to be starting inside her mouth, throat, or upper palette, so I suppose that's good.