Rooster has bone sticking out of neck!

[Cheltaran]

We recently rescued a stray rooster and have been looking after him. Today we noticed that there's a bone sticking out of the back of his neck, near where the wing joins the body. He doesn't seem to be in any visible pain or showing any other symptoms, and there's no blood or signs of infection. It's hidden under his neck feathers and lays flat, so we didn't see it until today when my partner was picking him up to see how he's doing (he was very skinny when we caught him, trying to see if he's put on any weight).

Anyone have any ideas? We were thinking of keeping him, but if this is a major issue we may have to surrender him so they can either put him down or treat it.

A bone sticking through the skin seems like a MAJOR issue to me, but the fact that it doesn't seem to be causing him any issues or bleeding, etc, makes me unsure.

Photos attached.


Edit: More Photos

 

[Cheltaran]

Update: So we had yet another feel of the thing. When we were inspecting it we could feel that there was some give in it, and once it came out a tiny bit we could feel the end of it inside him. Definitely NOT attached.

We decided to remove it. It came out fairly easily, and the roo was calm the whole time, didn't see to cause him much pain coming out. No blood at all! Though we still bathed the wound in antibacterial wash anyway, and will do that twice a day for the next week just in case. He's walking around as normal, eating, drinking, chasing the hens. Doesn't seem to be any worse the wear.

Here are the photos of the object. It's definitely not an echidna quill, but might be some other sort of foreign body? It still has characteristics of bone, except the colour. It's about 11cm long, which is 4.3 inches! I've added a line in some of the pics to show where it was stuck up to. The end that was inside him is the dark end, which is 5-6cm (2-2.5 inches). The shorter end is the part that was on the outside. Crazy! Still have no idea what the thing is.

 

[Cheltaran]

Here he is, weird object free and seems happy.

 

[Northwest_Wannabe]

Porcupine quill? Those don't live where I live so I've never seen one, I'm entirely unfamiliar, but they are hooked/barbed so maybe that's why it's not coming out? I'm clueless :0

 

[em_dawson]

For what it's worth, I'd put money on it being an echidna quill. I have one somewhere in my house, and it looks just like that. I can't find it to take a picture, but here's one from the internet. The darker end is on the tip, which is embedded in the skin, which has grown over it. Likely an older injury. The part that goes into the echidna's back is the part you can see sticking out, which is flatter. Here's a side by side of the two pictures.

 

[reddogmaster2]

OK, that is gruesomely awesome!

 

[BudgieKing15]

I'm gonna go with it being one of these:

 

[Cheltaran]

Thanks for your replies so far. When we get a chance later today or tomorrow I'll try and see just how far it's stuck into him, whether it's just in the skin or in the muscle as well. From there we can see whether we think it's safe to pull out or not.

 

[azygous]

An option not yet discussed but touched on by @LizzzyJo is to cut the thing off at the skin level and let it be.

This is an option sometimes chosen by first responders to accident victims that have been impaled by a wooden stake or arrow shaft. It relieves the pain of having the thing leveraged against his nerve endings when it hits against something. He's obviously functioned all right so far, and nothing further needs to be done.

 

[Spikeandbean]

Wow, thank you for the update. I'm so relieved! Good on you for looking after this guy.