Ridiculous saga of hen who wounded herself with her spurs (a little graphic)

[CaliChickens2023]

Hello everyone,

I am posting this with hope that it may help someone else in a similar situation down the road. It has been a long and disturbing saga and I'm amazed this poor hen survived.

We have a Rhode Island Red hen who is about 4 years old. She had roughly 1 inch spurs on each leg. About 8 months ago she began looking I'll. Her symptoms suggested a parasitic infection. Our vet gave us ivermectin. She improved significantly but would backslide back into looking terrible if I didn't administer ivermectin monthly.

Fast forward, 7 months later. We decide to try Drontal for tapeworms. My mom has her up on a shelf about parallel with my eyes and I notice something horrific: it appears one of the spurs on her leg got caught on her belly skin, tore it open, and dried onto the spur!!!!! (See below)

Immediately upon noticing this, I decide to take action to release her skin from the spur by cutting it away with scissors, just along where the skin appeared dead. (Sorry, I am stuck in italics from here on out now, apparently, Lol!)

I was horrified because I strongly suspect this is the underlying issue that was causing her to get so weak and sick with the worms!! I contacted the vet but her treatment would've been really costly. He recommended removing the spurs. Here is how her wound looked last week. It had a bad odor:

I felt I had to take matters into my own hands, I was afraid of what would happen to a weak chicken undergoing spur removal but was afraid if she spurred herself again she wouldn't survive.

So last week I got some Dr Naylor's Blu kote disinfectant spray sprayed her wound daily. I fearfully decided to remove those spurs on my own by clipping them off with wire cutters. I was so afraid of causing her tremendous pain. Thankfully it didn't seem to cause her much pain at all. They bled a little bit. I sprayed her spur removal sites with Blu Kote daily to prevent infection:

So, I've been spraying her wound and spur removal sites once a day for a week and as you can see the wound on her belly looks much smaller and better:

Her health is improving fast, she actually runs away when I try to catch her now. She used to just sit there listlessly. I'm really relieved.

I want to share this experience in case it can help someone else because I feel that I struggled to make the right decisions about how to help her. Information online about spur removal is not very good, imo. Ive heard just removing the outer husk with the potato method can lead to awful infections because the spur's raw bony root is exposed to contamination before it heals.

So anyway, here is our horror story about our poor hen unlucky enough to have sharp spurs. I think we will have a happy ending and I hope this can help someone!!!

 

[Wyorp Rock]

Our vet gave us ivermectin. She improved significantly but would backslide back into looking terrible if I didn't administer ivermectin monthly.

Fast forward, 7 months later. We decide to try Drontal for tapeworms. My mom has her up on a shelf about parallel with my eyes and I notice something horrific: it appears one of the spurs on her leg got caught on her belly skin, tore it open, and dried onto the spur!!!!!

I was horrified because I strongly suspect this is the underlying issue that was causing her to get so weak and sick with the worms!! I contacted the vet but her treatment would've been really costly. He recommended removing the spurs. Here is how her wound looked last week. It had a bad odor:

chicken undergoing spur removal

I fearfully decided to remove those spurs on my own by clipping them off with wire cutters. I was so afraid of causing her tremendous pain. Thankfully it didn't seem to cause her much pain at all. They bled a little bit.

Thank you for sharing.

Spurs can be trimmed with a dremel tool or filed down smoothly. They don't have to be removed, just smoothed and rounded so they don't get hung on anything.
I'm glad you discovered the injury and she's now starting to heal.

It's good that you are now treating the Tapeworms with the correct dewormer now, hopefully this will take care of them.

Looks like the wound is healing and it sounds like she's doing much better!
I hope she makes a full recovery.

 

[rosemarythyme]

Yikes! I hope she heals up from that injury without further issue.

I have one hen with large spurs that curve upwards so I routinely cut the tips off just to keep them blunt. Goes to show that even if it's rare, a chicken can hurt themselves on their own spurs, so something to keep an eye on!