This is just not my week...I think a loud noise from a utility truck in my driveway spooked my 2-month-old chickens and caused them to injure themselves, since I saw them running around through a window after hearing the noise. I went to check on them right away and three of the six suddenly had this beak injury:
The outer keratin layer got sliced at an angle from the back of the beak forward. Initially it was hanging on by a sliver at the front in all three cases. Two rapidly lost the piece and the third was less sever and it seemed to stick back down. The picture is after cleanup and disinfecting with vetericyn. The damaged areas were all bleeding at first although they dried rapidly after the vetericyn and didn't seem to need any styptic powder. I had been out feeding them just prior to this happening and there was nothing like this on anybody then. I have to think they sliced their beaks on something in the run since the damage is too similar for all three birds.
I'm not sure what to do when I let them out tomorrow morning. I scoured the run and can't find any obvious culprit for the damage. The run is 1/2in hardware cloth. I thought maybe a stray sharp tine from the hardware cloth since I've sliced myself badly on that stuff a few times but I just can't find anything like that. It all seems smooth. For now the injured birds are back in the coop with my others to sleep because they seemed to be eating/drinking just fine and nobody was picking at the areas (yet, anyway...daylight may change that). I read threads here of some similar injuries where it seems like the answer was to leave it to harden up, but do I need to worry about protecting the exposed area somehow so it doesn't get damaged even worse?
I don't have anything like bluekote unfortunately to cover up the color of the damaged area.
(EDIT: actually it looks like I might be able to get bluekote reasonably soon. It was out of stock locally when I was putting together a chicken first aid kit recently and couldn't seem to find shipping on it faster than a million years, but looks like my local store finally got it back in - so hopefully my husband can pick some up tomorrow when he's in town.)
The outer keratin layer got sliced at an angle from the back of the beak forward. Initially it was hanging on by a sliver at the front in all three cases. Two rapidly lost the piece and the third was less sever and it seemed to stick back down. The picture is after cleanup and disinfecting with vetericyn. The damaged areas were all bleeding at first although they dried rapidly after the vetericyn and didn't seem to need any styptic powder. I had been out feeding them just prior to this happening and there was nothing like this on anybody then. I have to think they sliced their beaks on something in the run since the damage is too similar for all three birds.
I'm not sure what to do when I let them out tomorrow morning. I scoured the run and can't find any obvious culprit for the damage. The run is 1/2in hardware cloth. I thought maybe a stray sharp tine from the hardware cloth since I've sliced myself badly on that stuff a few times but I just can't find anything like that. It all seems smooth. For now the injured birds are back in the coop with my others to sleep because they seemed to be eating/drinking just fine and nobody was picking at the areas (yet, anyway...daylight may change that). I read threads here of some similar injuries where it seems like the answer was to leave it to harden up, but do I need to worry about protecting the exposed area somehow so it doesn't get damaged even worse?
I don't have anything like bluekote unfortunately to cover up the color of the damaged area.
(EDIT: actually it looks like I might be able to get bluekote reasonably soon. It was out of stock locally when I was putting together a chicken first aid kit recently and couldn't seem to find shipping on it faster than a million years, but looks like my local store finally got it back in - so hopefully my husband can pick some up tomorrow when he's in town.)
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