Sedative for injured young Guinea.

[x4livin]

I have a young guinea fowl who has pecked a string and it is now wrapped around it's tongue. I haven't seen it yet(I go home from work in the morning) My mom went up and got the string off it's legs. The report that I priginally got was ominous(wrapped up in string, feet, legs and into mouth and laying there and "shaking". Once it's feet were loosesned, it drank and ambulated. It is huddled with the other 4 in a 5 gallon bucket of fluff in my bathroom at home. My mother's report was that she could not tell where the string even began in the mouth, but that it was wrapped around the tongue and cut in. Blood and all. If it still acts lively in the morning, I plan to try to get the string out of there(I am an RN, I can't just kill it if there's a chance of saving it)
Does anyone know of something that is sedating to fowl? I plan to wrap it in ace bandage and try to keep it's beak open and use tiny clamps, a sewing needle, tweexers, a stitch ripper, etc and time. I am not real sure of the anatomy of a guineas tongue, if anyone has any sugeestions or advice, I would seriously appreciate it.
Gina

 

[TeamChaos]

I wish you the best of luck, Gina! Will your mom (or someone) be around to help hold the bird? I'd say to wrap it in a towel with it's eyes covered and then you can hold it's beak open with one hand and slowly cut/pull the string out of there. Seeing as how you're an RN, I won't go on and on about all the complications that potentially come with such a situation- I'm sure you can imagine!

 

[x4livin]

It took tweezers, clamps, cuticle remover blade thingies, a large(leather) sewing needle, a 2 inch ace bandage to secure the guinea, a cap light, the good reading glasses and just not giving up. The end of his little tongue is black and will likely necrose on off some. After I finally got it off there, he didn't want to drink, so I put a cc or two of water down him with an IM (parvo vaccine) syringe I had used once and rinsed. He ran around with the others outside and looked like he was interested in eating, but didn't do much of it. I stirred warm water into old fashioned oats and dropped it by spoonfuls in the pen and he couldn't resist. He was out there working it down when I came back in. The anatomy of a guineas tongue is like an arrow. Arrow tip at the tip, with little hooks that held the string in his mouth where the string(sewing thread...from someones clothes likely) embedded itself. It tried to bleed a bit, but it had already begun to build up white eschar over the string and the tip was black and hard When I was done, there was a little bit of color back to the center of the tongue. We'll keep out fingers crosses and tempt him into eating with oats.

 

[CMV]

Nice work. I hope he recovers nicely from his misadventure.

Good luck to you both.

 

[TeamChaos]

Oh wow! Nicely done! Our guineas seem to find any stray string on the farm and while they have really gotten themselves in some knots, no one has been tongue tied. You've got quite a tool box going there- I appreciate your sharing the anatomical observations too.