SilkieChickensLove
Chirping
- Dec 2, 2022
- 36
- 41
- 61
Hi! New here- thank you for letting me join in! I have read this forum many times and have gotten tons of advice about our chickens here. 
I have an injury question. Sorry in advance for the novel!
We have a flock of silkies and frizzles and have two of them currently living in the house (and loving it) because of wounds on their backs. We noticed one of our young frizzles (probably 4 months old now) had a maybe 2" x 2" open wound on his back and another small spot on top of his wing same side. We cleaned it, used iodine, vetericyn and ointment on it and it is healing well after several days in the camp in the house. We figured someone was picking on him for some reason.
But then we found the grandma bird this morning with a very similar injury to her back- more mid back than under the wing. She is an older adopted bird, mostly blind and slow moving and she tends to stay where she is familiar in the coop & sleeps on the floor. None of our other birds have ever bothered her - they mostly ignore her since she tends to stay in a very small footprint that she knows.
So we are perplexed.
Since both of these birds were found low to the ground and we found both of them bleeding with open wounds when we opened the barn in the morning- we are now wondering if it might possibly be a large rat? We have seen rats in the chicken coop and run and have been battling with them so know they are there. Would a rat attack chickens biting them on their backs and (sorry) eat large areas of flesh? Or do you think other chickens would peck that much flesh off other birds overnight?
We are going to try to set up a ring camera inside the coop to see if we can catch the culprit-but wondering if anyone has had anything like this happen before?
I have an injury question. Sorry in advance for the novel!
We have a flock of silkies and frizzles and have two of them currently living in the house (and loving it) because of wounds on their backs. We noticed one of our young frizzles (probably 4 months old now) had a maybe 2" x 2" open wound on his back and another small spot on top of his wing same side. We cleaned it, used iodine, vetericyn and ointment on it and it is healing well after several days in the camp in the house. We figured someone was picking on him for some reason.
But then we found the grandma bird this morning with a very similar injury to her back- more mid back than under the wing. She is an older adopted bird, mostly blind and slow moving and she tends to stay where she is familiar in the coop & sleeps on the floor. None of our other birds have ever bothered her - they mostly ignore her since she tends to stay in a very small footprint that she knows.
So we are perplexed.
Since both of these birds were found low to the ground and we found both of them bleeding with open wounds when we opened the barn in the morning- we are now wondering if it might possibly be a large rat? We have seen rats in the chicken coop and run and have been battling with them so know they are there. Would a rat attack chickens biting them on their backs and (sorry) eat large areas of flesh? Or do you think other chickens would peck that much flesh off other birds overnight?
We are going to try to set up a ring camera inside the coop to see if we can catch the culprit-but wondering if anyone has had anything like this happen before?
