Three nearly identical beak injuries in just a few minutes

[DonyaQuick]

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.)

 

[Eggcessive]

It is probably from injuring the beaks by poking them through the hardware cloth. Just clean them with the Vetericyn, and make sure they are not getting run into the fencing or trying to peck at something on the other side.

 

[DonyaQuick]

This afternoon I can see that actually ALL of them came close to doing the same thing...if their heads were the same size. Some are just a bit bigger and they are the ones I thought were fine, but they actually have suspicious marks just slightly further down the beak. I guess the three that were injured were unlucky in having their beaks fit through the hardware cloth holes right up to the nares. As they grow I assume this will become less of an issue since their beaks will be bigger.

Usually they don't spook like they did with that utility truck, but they do have a habit of trying to reach things through the mesh...not sure how to control that. They regularly try to get bugs that way and there is a chipmunk they are determined to get as well whenever it comes close.

 

[Swbertrand1]

Definitely from poking their beaks WAY to hard into the holes of hardware cloth! Was this because they were frightened by a loud noise? Maybe. It could have been they were running from something else that scared them (predator?), or they could be just poking their beaks into the cloth too hard trying to explore the "other side"...

In any case, follow Eggcessive's advice above, but you might want to line the lower 8-10" of the hardware cloth with some aluminum or nylon screen mesh, the same stuff you'd put in a screen door or screened window to prevent them from getting their beaks through it. The kicker to that solution is that with aluminum screen, you're going to have sharp/pointy edges that will need to be addressed. To do so, if you choose aluminum, add a strip of Gorilla tape folded over the edges to prevent them from getting scratched or cut on the sharp points of the cut edge of screen. With nylon screen, it's not a concern.

 

[DonyaQuick]

I don't think there was a predator; there was a reasonable amount of activity between the guy with the utility truck and me stomping about out there. The panic I saw through the window corresponded to a pretty awful noise from the truck, but there is also a fearless chipmunk that is determined to try to get their food. It can't get in, but it can climb the mesh and they've tried to mob it a couple times before, although they've never injured themselves like this in the process. If it was desperation to go velociraptor mode on the chipmunk that led to this, then the issue may resolve itself one way or another after I get a larger mesh daytime-only run built around my secure nighttime setup. Other than that one critter and the one-off noise, I haven't seen anything cause them to get wound up to the point of pushing against the mesh except for me coming out with a treat bag.

you might want to line the lower 8-10" of the hardware cloth with some aluminum or nylon screen mesh, the same stuff you'd put in a screen door or screened window to prevent them from getting their beaks through it.

I'll have a look for some nylon mesh. I wondered about using a spare roll of 1/4in hardware cloth I've got but it has the same sharp edges issue and I'm worried a couple of my chickens would try to eat tape if I used that to cover it up. Of course, a certain other chicken might try to eat or just destroy the nylon based on past behavior...but it probably only has to be temporary until they get big enough that the can't fit their beaks through so far.

 

[DonyaQuick]

I may have found the hardware cloth that caused the damage...no way to know for sure I guess but I was really having a hard time figuring out how they got their beaks in so far and then I found this nasty little gap. It's SO hard to see unless I'm right up next to it with something right on the other side of it like in the pic. I could see them jamming their beaks in here much more easily than through one of the regular square holes.

I can't tell if this is damage to the hardware cloth or if it was just like this and I never noticed before. There aren't any sharp points, which is odd to me if it's a recent bit of damage. When I've snapped little bits off of hardware cloth to make it fit around things, it's never smooth like this hole is, which makes me think it was just like this and I didn't notice.