krissyweso
Songster
(Corndog one day ago... perfectly healthy... or so I thought.)
I wanted to post this for posterity, just so everyone knows it's something to look out for.
Today, I noticed my rooster, Corndog, wheezing. He is 3.5 years old and has always been so healthy. I brought him inside to monitor him, and he continued to wheeze badly, make a choking noise at times, sneeze at times, shake his head, and, when he would shake his head, liquid discharge came out of his nose or mouth. He was getting exponentially more and more lethargic by the minute. I thought it was probably some type of respiratory infection, so I bit the bullet and called the vet to get some antibiotics. Luckily, she had an appointment in an hour.
Corndog was really looking bad by the time we got to the vet (It had only been a couple hours prior that he was running around out in the yard with the girls). I told the vet about the choking noise, and she looked in his throat.
She found an infected abscess in his throat that was blocking his airway. He was suffocating. It was the last thing that I thought she would say. She showed it to me, and it looked like a piece of cheese stuck in the right side of his throat (pretty deep down). She poked around at it with a q-tip to see if she could scoop it out, and then he was turning blue. She rushed him into the back to give him oxygen. I was freaking out.
She returned to the exam room about 5 minutes later and said she didn't think there was anything she could do. She said he was going to die. My eyes welled up, and I started crying. I think I startled her, so she said, "Ummm... let me see if there's anything else I can do," turned around, and went back into the back room.
And thank goodness she did.
About 5 minutes later, she returned with Corndog in hand!!! And he wasn't wheezing!!! She said she knocked the abscess off, and she thought he ate it (she hoped he ate it because it would have been bad if he had breathed it in). He was breathing normally!! I thanked her unendingly.
He is on antibiotics, but he is back to his normal, quirky self: sitting on shoulders, jumping on chairs, eating fresh mozz... So far so good. He'll be inside for a while (though he misses his girls a lot) so that I can keep an eye on him.
Side note: when I asked the vet what could have caused the abscess, she said, "No clue." So, they're not preventable as far as I can tell.
This was a weird one, so I wanted to share my experience to let you know it's something to look out for. Also, please send all the healing vibes to my baby boy Corndog. His throat has to be killing him.
