Sick rooster, leg and neck injury

[ochochicas]

My super-sweet rooster is very sick this morning and can't lift his head. He has been going to roost at night, but I have not been able to observe the chickens as much as I normally do since our power has been out and it is dark when I get home from work (with no lights). Over the weekend I noticed he was walking with a little limp and his tail was a bit droopy, but he was running around eating just like normal.

This morning he jumped/fell off the roost and just laid there unable to move. I brought him in the house. He can't stand, walk, or lift his head. I forced him to drink some electrolyte/vitamin water by putting a small amount in his beak with a syringe. He will swallow once, but after that just lets the water run out. I also cooked some corn and he'll eat two piece and then have to rest. I have to hold him up to swallow since he can't hold his own head up.

Upon further examination, his left leg is enlarged and hard, while the right one seems to be tiny (normal??). He also has a large scab on the left leg/thigh. I am wondering if there might be some kind of infection or abscess in the leg that is making him sick. I am going to work on the leg after he's warmed up a bit.

Should I give him some antibiotic like Tylan 50 in case it is an infection? He has not lost any weight. I weighed him 3 weeks ago and he was 5.0 pounds. Today he is 5.2 pounds. He is alert and has no signs of respiratory illness or anything else. He's such a nice roo that I want to give him a fair chance for recovery before we make the decision to cull him.

Thanks!!!

 

[chooks4life]

Update on my rooster. He is doing a bit better, but still not out of the woods. He gags whenever he tries to drink. After eating he seems to have respiratory distress and has to lay down to rest. I examined his neck again and can't find any external wounds. He does have a hard lump just behind his wattles that is about the size of a marble. Not sure if it is from the injury or something else. I started to suspect he might have wet fowl pox, but I have looked all over him and in his mouth and have never seen any lesions.
Lump is in front of my fingers.

Don't know what the lump is, but I think you're right, he could be developing other problems now due to the immune system being under stress.

I do not think the yellowing in his skin is jaundice. If it were it would be all over his body and not just located around his leg and neck.

Not necessarily, though it's a reasonable assumption; liver issues including jaundice can and often do create restricted patches of brown or yellow discoloration, sometimes only over the abdomen, or only in the throat, or only in the sclera, or in similarly isolated places rather than overall. Kidney issues can cause similar problems but so can overdose of vitamin A and some other nutrients.

I'm certain it is old bruising from being attacked by a predator. Today is day 3 on Tylan. He is more alert and can walk and lift his head on his own. After I cleaned him up a bit more and put him in front of the stove to dry, he walked around at ate some corn and cucumbers. It's not a balanced diet, but at least he's eating something and getting some fluid in his system, too.

Good luck with him.

 

[ArekE]

This is the saddest thing that i have read all month. I read the whole thing and i was happy to hear improvment. Then when i heard he turned for the worst it almost made me cry. Great story though.

 

[chooks4life]

Very sorry to hear that. You did your best, and all the what-ifs are now irrelevant.

He was a handsome fellow, looks quite different in that last pic of him. Really does show how affected he was, in the earlier thread pics.

Sorry for your loss. Great to hear you got bubs though! Hate losing a good animal without getting to breed them, that's even worse than just losing it outright.

 

[chooks4life]

My super-sweet rooster is very sick this morning and can't lift his head. He has been going to roost at night, but I have not been able to observe the chickens as much as I normally do since our power has been out and it is almost dark when I get home from work. Over the weekend I noticed he was walking with a little limp and his tail was a bit droopy, but he was running around eating just like normal.

Sounds like he's had an ongoing infection, possibly from snakebite or a wound... A vet may well be your only bet here, he sounds somewhat far gone already. If you can't afford a vet, antibiotics for sure.

This morning he jumped/fell off the roost and just laid there unable to move. I brought him in the house. He can't stand, walk, or lift his head. I forced him to drink some electrolyte/vitamin water by putting a small amount in his beak with a syringe. He will swallow once, but after that just lets the water run out. I also cooked some corn and he'll eat two piece and then have to rest. I have to hold him up to swallow since he can't hold his own head up.

Upon further examination, his left leg is enlarged and hard, while the right one seems to be tiny (normal??). He also has a large scab on the left leg/thigh. I am wondering if there might be some kind of infection or abscess in the leg that is making him sick. I am going to work on the leg after he's warmed up a bit.

What specifically do you mean, 'work on the leg'?

I would not interfere with it personally, if it's enlarged and hard, it sounds like a very serious infection, moving the leg around will likely help shift the infection around and possibly kill him.

Should I give him some antibiotic like Tylan 50 in case it is an infection? He has not lost any weight. I weighed him 3 weeks ago and he was 5.0 pounds. Today he is 5.2 pounds. He is alert and has no signs of respiratory illness or anything else. He's such a nice roo that I want to give him a fair chance for recovery before we make the decision to cull him.

He could have lost weight but the infection could be falsely boosting his weighing results through fluid accumulation. Hope he gets better.

Antibiotics sounds like a good idea, whether natural or artificial (or both, preferably) but I have no experience with artificial antibiotics so would recommend you use garlic, two or more cloves, freshly minced, raw, possibly added to yoghurt or a tin of fish (e.g. catfood, unsalted sardines for humans) to help him eat it if he's not keen, or perhaps scrambled or hardboiled eggs instead.

It's a powerful antibiotic spectrum in garlic, can destroy microbes, viruses, bacteria etc that artificial antibiotics can't touch. It also speeds healing.

I'd probably mince up some raw onion for him too, it has its own medicinal properties specifically as a blood cleanser, and it will assist his liver too which will be under strain with the toxified blood. Also, garlic will support the artificial antibiotics, in studies done on using both garlic and artificial antibiotics it's been shown that the garlic makes them more effective.

Best wishes.

 

[ochochicas]

Thanks for the reply Chooks. I really do appreciate you taking time to answer. The roo was so sick this morning I didn't think he would make it until I got home from the store with the medicine.

He was actually alert this evening and was trying to eat. I took him out of his kennel and soaked the scab on his leg with novalssan solution. Further down his leg I found a second scab. It looks to me like he was attacked by something. We don't have snakes here, so I'm guessing a larger predator like a coyote or a dog. The two wounds on his leg are about 2 1/2 inches apart. I flushed the wounds, but they seem to be mostly healed and there is no apparently infection inside - no heat, no puss, no swelling or inflammation. I believe the wounds are more than a week old. The weather here has been so nasty that we have not been able to let the chickens out of the barn. He is not really missing feathers though, so I don't know what to think.

Pics of the wound before and after soaking




The yellow discoloration in the second photo is all bruising from whatever happened to him.

Before I put him away, I checked him all over and found another huge scab under his neck. I soaked it in Novalssan, too, and huge piece of scab with feathers came off. It looked like serum from a wound had glued all his feathers together. I could not tell where the original wound was or if it punctured into his neck or crop anywhere. He's got so many feathers it was difficult to see everything. If I lay him on his side he seems to have trouble breathing, so I was trying to do everything with his standing up, which made it harder to see. I think getting the feathers freed up on his neck made Roo feel better.

After all that (two hours later) Roo was getting fed up with his treatment. I have him .5 ml of tylan 50 SQ and them gave him another .5 ml orally after he ate his dinner. DH took him in to watch TV while I got his shower-room ready for the night. The plan is to keep him in the shower and give Tylan for 5 days. If anyone has any other suggestions I'm all ears!


Half way up while he eats dinner. Poor guy.

 

[ochochicas]

Quick update. The rooster is not doing better this morning. He spent the whole night standing and will not eat or swallow anything this morning. I had to inject his Tylan and he didn't even put up a fight. I fear he has damage to his neck, crop or airway and we found it too late. He is finally laying down sleeping now. At this moment he's about the same as he was yesterday morning. I'm not sure why he was looking better last night. I was starting to get my hopes up, but now I think he's not going to make it.

 

[ten chicks]

Part of the problem is that he is not eating enough food. Birds require a constant supply of food to fuel their high metabolic bodies,without this fuel they cannot regulate their body temp,and after a period of days their body starts to shut down and they die. Unfortunately more birds die from starvation/dehydration than from actual issues,this is just the way they are.

You might want to consider tube feeding,although at this point it maybe too late for that,but if you believe he is not going to survive then you have nothing to lose. Make sure he is kept warm.

 

[ochochicas]

Thanks ten chicks. He is in the house in the bathroom. He ate A LOT last night, so I was really hopeful that he was feeling better. I left him this morning with two bowls of food and a bowl of water. If he has not eaten, I will consider tubing him when I get home. He is probably dehydrated, but like I mentioned before he has not lost any weight so I'm pretty sure he has been eating up until Monday sometime.

 

[chooks4life]

Thanks ten chicks. He is in the house in the bathroom. He ate A LOT last night, so I was really hopeful that he was feeling better. I left him this morning with two bowls of food and a bowl of water. If he has not eaten, I will consider tubing him when I get home. He is probably dehydrated, but like I mentioned before he has not lost any weight so I'm pretty sure he has been eating up until Monday sometime.

Agree with what ten chicks said... Even if he doesn't appear to have lost weight, they can die of dehydration from incremental losses one could think insignificant. It's good he's eating now.

Those pics show some serious wounds, I expect they're much deeper than they look. I would think a dog has grabbed him in its mouth perhaps, and the internal damage is far greater than what is showing.

I don't believe the yellow is necessarily bruising, it may be, but birds tend to bruise green and it's not all around the wound site, but further out... It's quite possibly jaundice from the infection.

It does sound like there is internal infection, even if you see nothing around the wound site it's quite likely there's deeper infection with a closed channel of entry between the scab and the infection itself.

Best wishes.