Top beak 'broken' maybe / in an unusual way (days ago)

[ackie]

I'm going to try to answer all the questions asked in the pinned thread so bear with me if any is irrelevant. (tl;dr at the end)

Tim is a gamecock with a smidge of orpington somewhere in there, young maybe a year/year and a half, his spurs are 1.25 inches. I didnt weigh him but he's the same size as the others / normal for the flock (I assumed 1kg when dosing meds)

Saturday Tim got his behind handed to him when a peacock and a rooster ganged up on him beating on him over the course of 4 hours (learned via security camera, as i would definitely have stopped this at once). He is related to the other birds but I had him penned up separately for too long and recently started letting Tim out. Usually squabbles are a quick case of -im bigger- -no I'm bigger- -okay you're right- and no fighting actually happens so I suspect Tim didnt back down.

Anyway, I found Tim laying on his back with his head very bloody, barely breathing to the point where I thought he was dead and soon after actually gave my SO the go-ahead to dispatch him (which I dont do lightly but we suspected internal injuries as there were no external injuries, we heard wheezing, and SO watched the video of them abusing him). He was busy with something else and in the meantime I managed to get him to drink some water via a syringe and he started perking up so I rescinded the kill order.

I kept giving him water with some tylan 50 in it and metacam for the pain, and cleaned off his head with saline and betadine. Over the next couple days I kept syringe-feeding him water which he swallows but sometimes with a light wheezing / gurgle and shoving chick starter mush into his mouth with my finger.

His poop is normal, no blood, and he hasnt coughed up any blood either so I'm starting to think he might be okay. He is actually drinking on his own from an elevated water bowl. He can reach the ground but wasnt using the ground bowl. And hes crowing again!

Bedding is pine straw in a coop with a dirt floor and an outdoor run except that I'd been letting him out to free range maybe three days leading up to this.

tl;dr:
Anyway, heres the important bit. I noticed it was fairly easy to force feed him mush because I could just push down on his longer lower mandible and open his mouth when normally is have to do some prying...which is when it occured to me that that's not what a beak should look like. His top mandible isnt injured in any visible way. It looks like a beak. I have found exactly one post where someone said their chickens top manible got pushed back into his head and they were able to pull it back out, but it's been a few days so, even if that is the solution, I'm not sure its viable now. I know eating and drinking can be modified to work with the new beak configuration but what type of damage am I looking at from the beak being pushed back? I seriously can't find anything else anywhere about this.

I know he looks pretty rough in the pictures, but I'm so thrilled with his progress so far.

 

[Eggcessive]

I can’t offer much help with his beak problem except to refer you to this link:
https://the-chicken-chick.com/repairing-chickens-broken-beak/
And another:
https://www.petmd.com/bird/conditions/traumatic/broken-and-injured-beak-birds

I would probably leave him alone, and just doctor his wounds, offering soft mushy feed made wet with water, some scrambled egg, and some chick vitamins.

 

[sourland]

My gut says he is going to be okay. I may be wrong, but upper beak does not look like a 'dying' beak. Is he trying to eat on his own ? Moistened feed in a deep bowl - perhaps elevated - may help. Understand one thing = given his DNA he will never quit, and will not coexist with other roosters and now the peacock. Well done on what you have accomplished with him so far, and very evidently he has some strong genetics behind him.

 

[ackie]

My gut says he is going to be okay. I may be wrong, but upper beak does not look like a 'dying' beak. Is he trying to eat on his own ? Moistened feed in a deep bowl - perhaps elevated - may help. Understand one thing = given his DNA he will never quit, and will not coexist with other roosters and now the peacock. Well done on what you have accomplished with him so far, and very evidently he has some strong genetics behind him.

I intend to keep him locked up with his ladies from now on. No more free ranging for him. The coop has a run and isnt over crowded so it should be fine. My other pens have too many birds in them for living but are acceptable for night time use with free range.

EDIT: missed your question. He is eagerly drinking on his own but I havent seen him eat.

 

[ackie]

UPDATE
Tim and I were spending some quality time together and I noticed that on his worse side, there is a section of exposed bone or beak that isnt on the other side. Pictures will explain it better than I can. I circled it in one image. Not really visible in the picture is the fact that theres a definite gap/crack/break at the bottom of the exposed area. I'm not familiar with skull anatomy yet so idk if that's normal.

 

[roosterhavoc]

UPDATE
Tim and I were spending some quality time together and I noticed that on his worse side, there is a section of exposed bone or beak that isnt on the other side. Pictures will explain it better than I can. I circled it in one image. Not really visible in the picture is the fact that theres a definite gap/crack/break at the bottom of the exposed area. I'm not familiar with skull anatomy yet so idk if that's normal.

He’ll be fine. If I were you I’d take a warm wash cloth and scrub all the dried blood off of him. He will be able to eat just fine. He will probably look a little rough from here on out. In the future you probably shouldn’t let game roosters out together. This will happen pretty often and it only takes a little while to end up with mangled birds. Keep the peacock away from the roosters.

 

[ackie]

He’ll be fine. If I were you I’d take a warm wash cloth and scrub all the dried blood off of him. He will be able to eat just fine. He will probably look a little rough from here on out. In the future you probably shouldn’t let game roosters out together. This will happen pretty often and it only takes a little while to end up with mangled birds. Keep the peacock away from the roosters.

I have probably 20 game cocks and they all cohabitate just fine since they join the flock at birth and a pecking order is established fairly naturally. The only issue here is I separated this guy, and, after that, I shouldnt have let him back out with the others. The peacocks and roosters interact just fine normally as well. We have 15 acres so the less powerful one always has room to run away.

 

[roosterhavoc]

I have probably 20 game cocks and they all cohabitate just fine since they join the flock at birth and a pecking order is established fairly naturally. The only issue here is I separated this guy, and, after that, I shouldnt have let him back out with the others. The peacocks and roosters interact just fine normally as well. We have 15 acres so the less powerful one always has room to run away.

They aren’t gamecocks then. Good luck

 

[ackie]

They aren’t gamecocks then. Good luck

They look game to me?

 

[roosterhavoc]

They look game to me?

They might look like it but if they were truly game cocks you wouldn’t be able to keep adult roosters out together. Yes penning them and then letting them back out will cause problems faster but without the smidge of Orpington and whatever else they’d all be killing each other around the 6-8 month mark. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with your birds they look great but clearly they have had quite a bit of their aggressiveness bred out of them. So...when you see other people with gamefowl individually penned it’s not because you’ve found some magical way to sort through the pecking order and others haven’t their birds are just totally different because they haven’t been watered down with layers.