Tiny translucent worm in wound / loss of feathers irritated skin / VERY rapid onset

[eggcatcher]

I have leghorn chickens, total of 7, 2 are effected others show no signs of problems. They weigh about 4 pounds and don't appear to have changed in weight. They act the same as normal, active, eating drinking, running when called for grain. Yesterday morning all chickens looked fine, about noon I noticed most all of the feathers off the back of one chicken. The chicken was aggresively pecking at herself. The skin on her back not around the vent but more on the back and upper legs is very dry and irritated almost raw, there is some serous drainage. The one bird had a deep wound with tiny (like 1mm) tranluscent worms hundreds. I wasn't even sure it was worms at first. I looked almost like the skin was shimmering I wasn't sure it was worms until I got a magnifying glass. No known injury. The other chicken has no open wound just had the irritated skin and loss of feathers and a little serous drainage. Poop looks normal. I bathed the chickens in disenfectent soap, swabed the seepy areas with .025% sevin solution, and then powdered them with sevin powder. I powdered the rest of the birds, changed out all the nesting material and used a little sevin in the nests. With the one bird with the transluscent worms I washed and irrigated and rinsed the wound with peroxide, also swabbed the area with sevin solution as above, coated a cotton ball with mineral oil and put it over the wound and bandaged it so the bird wouldn't peck at herself anymore. She tolerated this all quite well. I'm hoping the mineral oil with smother whatever is alive there and or the sevin will kill it. I can't afford a vet. Does anyone have any idea what these worms are. No they aren't maggots. No mites scene. The other five chickens were thoughly examined and showed no sign of disease. I seperated the two with symptoms. Please let me know if there is anything else I could do and again if you have any idea what the worms could be.

 

[nurse_turtle]

The term 'maggot' is widely used to describe certain larvae of many different species of egg laying insects. The tiny worms are some type of insect larvae. The adult insect was drawn to lay her eggs there due to some tissue necrosis/rot. If all the larvae are not removed, the bird will perish. As long as the larvae are present, your bird is being "eaten alive". It takes quite some effort and time to rid a bird of these larvae and heal the underlying wound/infection. The bird may need antibiotic ointment and/or by mouth and/or by injection. I imagine there is some kinda of parasitic infestation that led to skin irritation that lead to the hen pecking at her itchy/irritated skin and breaking the skin surface causing a wound that became infected which attracted certain insects which laid eggs which hatched and now hundreds of larvae are eating the infected tissue.