Turkey fell off slaughter truck- Rescued but needs help!

[GrandpaUtz]

As promised, a picture of him without the weird lighting for a more accurate color pic. Here he is so proud of himself after biting the syringe with his pain meds out of my hand and flinging it across the shed! Dont worry I did eventually get him to take them but not without taking a peck to the hand myself.

Still bug free and the wound looks much better! I'm going to pretty much leave him be tonight. A night of rest will do him good I think.

 

[rjohns39]

Looking much better.

 

[DwayneNLiz]

i think his color is quite good really

 

[Mewzikl]

Yay! Go Sebastian! You guys are doing an awesome job <3

Again, thank you all for your kind words of encouragement and advice! I have an update on Sebastian's situation this morning!

Last night I rushed to tractor supply then home with all my supplies: permethryn, some of the hexicyclone or whatever that was recommended on the previous page, and some clean wood shavings for his bedding. I forgot the pee pads in the rush, unfortunately, but he's getting some of those tonight.

We got in there and whoo boy he was not happy. First I rolled him over on his back so we could check out his underside- no feathers whatsoever. Overall there is a good bit of bruising but no real cuts or damage besides that. Which is good because if the area around his vent was bad, well I feel like that would be a whole 'nother deal!

Roll him back on his belly and have a go at what we are calling simply The Wound - it's a gash about two inches long and maybe an inch deep. It looks black but I can't tell if that is infection or healing/scabs or maybe even just dried blood from before. It's on the upper side of his tail and it is what was crawling with maggots before. At first we were psyched because we didn't see any maggots until I really shined the light in there and started looking. They are bigger than they were yesterday for sure, but they were way deep in The Wound. LUCKILY The Wound is the last of our worries. Everything else seems to be scabbing up and healing nicely! Unfortunately it really seems bad....

And let me tell you when we started cleaning that sucker out he. was. pissed! Poor little fella was hissing up a storm until he eventually went quiet. I think he was in a lot of pain because he soon went really docile and his head went white. :-(

I flushed out The Wound with the permethryn mixture and tried to pick out all of the maggots that I could but I KNOW I couldn't get all of them. I took a syringe that came extra with the pain medicine and flushed some fresh water in there trying to flush them out but I know I didn't get all of them. My only hope is that they 1) are killed by the insecticide, or 2) finish up their life cycle soon enough and die on the fly strips we are hanging up. I plan on going back at The Wound maybe tonight but poor Sebastian still seems so worked up over last night I'm nervous about sending him completely into shock.

So after I did that I rinsed it out with antiseptic and the vetrictyn fluid and let him relax. All of this, by the way, was done with the help of my mother and girlfriend - huge helps and I could not do it without both of them!

Then we cleaned out his pen, threw away all of the straw and laid down fresh bedding for him, repaired the lighting fixture above his head (the bulb had broken a year ago and, well, it was 1 of 4 in our shed so we weren't in too much of a hurry to fix it before now) and got him fresh food/water. He still is only lightly picking at his food, but he is sucking down water like you wouldn't believe!

Now The Wound didn't smell horrible like I would think an infected wound would, but feeling Sebastian's head it FEELS like he is running a fever. That being said, none of us know exactly what a healthy turkey temperature is.... I contacted my vet about possible antibiotics to combat this and she said she will look and see what she has available.

All in all, we are very cautiously optimistic. If we can get The Wound healed up, he is going to be just fine, I think. Here is a picture of him after his ordeal last night:

View attachment 1158452

He is also getting a facebook page soon, so when that happens I'll post it here so whoever wants to can follow him on there! My mom and girl were super excited about making it to spread his story around!View attachment 1158452

 

[rjohns39]

i think his color is quite good really

So I was worried for nothing.

 

[LJoWilly]

Awe...such a handsome boy!!

You should be a proud papa!#

 

[DwayneNLiz]

So I was worried for nothing.

Not necessarily! I think it was the heat lamp and camera that made him look more 'grey'
He's kinda blue but that shows he is perturbed, but he is still pink around the edges
And he is still very very young

Next stop- physical therapy!!

 

[sumi]

He's looking good and it sounds like he's feeling better too!

 

[MinervaELS]

Is it too soon after the last update to ask how he's doing?

 

[venymae]

Low fat high protein food: Chicken breast

I love reading the updates here.