Ruptured hernia

[summermom]

Quote:
Thanks, chkn. I'm a psych nurse, so medical issues won't be what I deal with, unfortunately for my chickens! My husband said the same thing - that if we don't even try, this is going to keep happening and we'll never know what to do and how to heal them. But I just can't see putting any individual through suffering for the hypothetical future benefit of others.

Also, if we had caught this right when it happened, before the guts came into contact with the ground, maybe, just maybe, there would have been a point to it. But given the condition her guts were in, I should never have agreed to try. There was just so much dirt that it took us 2 hours to just get the dirt off and although the intestine itself is not ruptured, the outer membrane is. And it's not like the hernia is repaired - all we were able to do is push the 2 loops of intestine back into the hernia. In an ideal world, we would have been able to afford to take her to an avian vet (of which there are none around here) as soon as we noticed the hernia a year ago, and the vet would have surgically repaired the hernia. But this way - no, too much damage and almost certain infection down the road.

http://forum.backyardpoultry.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7991255&p=402479 "The vet advised us that there is no need to do anything in our hen's case, as it is not bothering her at all. If it starts to bother her (e.g. if she pecks at it, or if it starts to drag on the ground) then she can have surgery (about $400) to put the intestines back and sew up the hole in the muscles. Sometimes the surgery doesn't work though, and the longer you leave it the greater the chance of it failing. We have decided to leave it for now and let her get on with her life. "

As to killing her, I'm not squeamish. I'll do whatever needs to be done. I've always believed that a quick death is better than protracted suffering.

 

[summermom]

She's gone. Found a vet (who has chickens herself) who was willing to euthanize her.

R.I.P. Buttsky

 

[Gypsy07]

If you're not squeamish, and you can do it as quickly as possible, it's almost always best to do it yourself rather than making the trip to the vet. And not that money is of primary importance when trying to prevent someone suffering, but it saves you too. I once had a chicken with a prolapse, and I took her to the vet who spent two weeks trying to sort it out. She had to be euthanised in the end anyway, by which time I had spent £130. I didn't grudge the money, but I did feel bad for the poor hen having to go through two weeks for futile treatment. The next time I found a hen with a similar looking prolapse, I carried her straight to the chopping block and took her head off with an axe.

Animals don't understand pain the way we do. They can't make the choice to endure suffering in order to recover and then be pain free. They don't really do past and future the way we do. They just live in the present. And if their present is full of nastiness, personally I think it's best to put them out of their misery. As to how chickens feel pain and why they never seem to show any signs of it, my vet told me that because a flock of chickens will tend to turn on a weak or sickly member and attack them, sick chickens will do everything possible to conceal the signs of their suffering in order to save themselves being attacked by their flockmates. So if you have a chicken that's showing even faint signs of pain or illness, it's probably already been in agony for ages without you noticing...

 

[summermom]

I didn't grudge the money, but I did feel bad for the poor hen having to go through two weeks for futile treatment.

Yep. Although what I'm amazed by is how difficult it is to find vets who actually treat chickens as part of their practice. We live out in farm country and we have lots of large animal vets, but they don't do chickens. So far both the vets I've met have chickens themselves, but they won't see chickens professionally - what's up with that?​

 

[Olive Hill]

Quote:
Yep. Although what I'm amazed by is how difficult it is to find vets who actually treat chickens as part of their practice. We live out in farm country and we have lots of large animal vets, but they don't do chickens. So far both the vets I've met have chickens themselves, but they won't see chickens professionally - what's up with that?

Medical treatment for a chicken is very, VERY rarely reasonable from an economic standpoint. There are not many vets who treat chickens because there is very little demand for and return on the investment to do so. In pretty much every other type of livestock there is an industry that centers around the species that ultimately results in enough demand to keep the vet afloat and the backyard pets of that species are simply a little bonus business on the side. If you have a family cow, for instance, you can generally find a vet because that vet is kept in demand by the cattle -- dairy, beef or both -- industry. You will not find a chicken farmer calling the vet out on a $50+ farm call to save a $2 laying hen. It's simply not pragmatic to do so. But if one of my brood sows goes down I would not hesitate to call the vet out if I required help. The difference is in the economics. My sows produce thousands of dollars of product per year and are not easily -- or cheaply -- replaceable. A laying hen produces less than $100 worth of eggs per year, gross, and can be replaced easily and cheaply.

When it comes to livestock the vast majority of money lies in industry; therefore industry determines the demands and service providers meet those demands.

 

[summermom]

Olive, I get it about the economics of it, but if you are a vet, and you have your own chickens, why would you flat out refuse to see other people's chickens in your office when someone does want to bring their chicken in for treatment? Because even if they haven't specialized in poultry care, they have to have figured out some stuff simply from having their own chickens and applying their veterinary knowledge to them, right?

 

[Olive Hill]

Quote:
Just because a vet owns chickens does not mean (s)he is equipped to treat them in his/her clinic. Every species has unique biological systems, they are plagued by different illness, respond differently to medications and treatment philosophies. The last thing you want is a vet who specializes in another species and has very little if any knowledge of your species treating your animal. That's how accidents end up happening, that's how animals end up dying nasty deaths. Personally, I'd rather have a vet tell me no than try and mess it up. And that is the general consensus among most livestock owners. Don't send me a cattle vet when my horse is colicing, don't send me a horse vet when my sow has a pig stuck, and so on and so forth. And many vets know and try to operate based on this, because they don't want the liability either.

When I call my clinic with a question I talk to a different vet depending on what species I am calling about, because each vet within the practice doesn't necessarily treat all species, but what they do treat they do a good job with.