Tail injury with swelling.

[Exopoulterer]

Scaley the Henster (runty chicken) may have been pecked at the tail or have an ingrown feather. It is her right side. Sort of where the outer nostril of the Parson's nose would be.

She seems to be in the last mini molt I noticed the other pullets of the same age (Nuz may actually be a week or two younger.) had right before they started laying a couple months ago. Scaley's estimated hatch date is 4/20/25.

Maybe because of her runtyness and being the only one not laying, she gets picked on by Big Red and some squabbling from The Nuzzler.
Until now, I have never seen a mark on her. She is fast and flies well. Flies up to my arm or shoulder for treats or just cause. She dodges Red often and actually takes some crap from Nuz without running away.

I discovered a bit of messy feather with some old blood there yesterday. Wiped with a warm wet gauze and applied triple antibiotic cream.

Today, I went in with warm saline compresses just with cotton rounds and the scab loosened up. I removed that and it bled a little. I dried it the best I could and added more triple antibiotic. She hated this. I can tell it hurts her when I mess with the area.

She holds her tail a little bit to the right now. I feel like it really stressed her to have that messed with.

Is there anything else that I should be doing?

 

[Wyorp Rock]

Sounds like you are treating this well.

How does her Preening Gland look, any swelling of the nub?

 

[Exopoulterer]

Sounds like you are treating this well.

How does her Preening Gland look, any swelling of the nub?

The nub looks pretty normal as far as nubs go. This bird allows me to touch her everywhere but that little nub. If I look for it or touch it, she makes the sound from Super Mario bros, when Mario gets hurt. "Brrrrt! (Don't touch that!)"

 

[Exopoulterer]

Here it is today and a couple shots of the "no touch! spot" (preen gland). Ohhh she hated that. Lol

 

[Wyorp Rock]

The nub looks pretty normal as far as nubs go. This bird allows me to touch her everywhere but that little nub. If I look for it or touch it, she makes the sound from Super Mario bros, when Mario gets hurt. "Brrrrt! (Don't touch that!)"

Oh, they don't like the preen gland being touched. LOL Yes, I've heard that Brrrt sound too, good description!

Thank you for the additional photos.

I think the Preen Gland looks find, which is a good thing.

The addition photo of the wounded area looks like it may be a Feather Cyst. I'll tag in @Eggcessive and @coach723 to see what they may think.

 

[Exopoulterer]

I am bumping this to ask for advice on what I should try at home and if anyone else has dealt with a similar issue or an issue in that area of the body.

I have added updated photos of the area of concern.

I am really having a hard time deciding whether I should lance this thing and where. It appears to be in a vascular area that happens to be pretty sensitive. I see the little veins and the scab did bleed a little that first time I removed part of it.

My daughter helped me today when we brought Scaley into the bathroom for the first time. I used a wash cloth soaked in warm water as a compress for a few minutes a couple times before attempting to clean it up a bit.

I used a 16.9 oz purified water bottle with a hole poked in the cap after adding 2 tsp of salt and warming to squirt the area as thoroughly as possible so I didn't soak my whole bird. I am kind of afraid of soaking my girls and have yet to try that.

The photos are right after I squirted her. She is such a good girl and actually stood on the edge of the tub while I was in the tub squirting the heck out of the sore area with a pretty hard stream. She ate treats that my daughter was giving her to distract her.

We then got some tweezers and tried to remove the big feather shaft with no luck. It was mooshy. We removed a couple of the stringy feathers and scraped just a bit of the superficial part of the scab closest to her preen gland nub. We didn't have the courage to go deeper into the wound because she bled a little the first time I picked at it. There was no bleeding this time.

I will say that this looks very similar, (only a little bit larger) to what happened to Dove's knee that I give her credit for healing that up on her own. The tail location close to Scaley's uropygial gland, and the veins are intimidating but also make me want to treat it more aggresively. The scab that came off of Dove looked like it had a bit of feather material inside.

Could there be a big tail feather in there? Is it an area that could bleed a lot?

The first photo is how it looked right before removing a couple of the small stringy feathers from the scab. The second shows it's proximity to the papilla of her uropygial gland.

 

[Wyorp Rock]

It does look like it may be a feather cyst. I'll tag @Eggcessive again and also @azygous

If the feathers are mushy and stringy when plucked, I would assume there's pus underneath there. Lancing may be an option, but it probably will bleed.