Update: HAPPY ENDING! - Friday 13th - One dead, one injured.

[Wolfpacker]

When I get the final bill, I'll let you know.

 

[TheOLDNewChick]

Quote:
I'm sorry for your loss. :[ Drat whatever got after your girls.



Amoxicillan? I have to give it to my cat for his sinus infections, but now I believe he's become a junkie and acts sick so he can get it!

 

[lizardz]

Hope everything goes well with your little one. For future knowledge, hydrogen peroxide is okay to use for a time or two, but after that it shouldn't be used. It prevents new tissue from growing. I'm surprised your vet didn't tell you that! Good luck!

 

[BantamMom13720]

Wow, I've lost several small hens to daytime predators- most likely racoons. We just moved all my guys to a brand new pen/house combination which I'm sure is secure- but I still pen them in at nighttime .

Sounds to me like your little girl was very lucky! I hope you find out what did it. I hate the way they pull them through the fence- it's awful!

 

[Wolfpacker]

Thanks folks for all your advice and concern. I've learned a LOT from this ordeal. It was so nice to have you folks to vent to. My wife still doesn't know the extent of what was going on.

The vet just called me and the surgery was a success. She's awake, standing, eating, and drinking. I can pick her up this afternoon.

Now - what's a good name for a one-winged chicken? Anyone know the name of the "goose that laid the golden egg," 'cause she's gonna have to REALLY come through for me now in the egg department!

 

[hollyclyff]

That's great that the surgery went well. I hope she has an uneventful recovery.

 

[eggcetra_farms]

You know what's funny? When it got really hot the first time around two of our girls weren't really laying, but Kitty Cat the one-winged chicken was pumping them out! My husband joked that it was because she was much cooler without one wing. Well, who knows? Maybe that's true.

 

[Wolfpacker]

In light of what I have just been through with this chicken, I cannot BELIEVE I just saw this story on my local TV channel's website:

Botfly 'nests' on man's head
18/07/2007 14:48 - (SA)

Carbondale - One doctor thought the bleeding, strange bumps on Aaron Dallas' head might have been a gnat bite. A specialist thought it was shingles, though both doctors held out the possibility that it was something far more disturbing.

Then the bumps started moving.

A doctor found five active botfly larvae living on Dallas' head, near the top of his skull, a few weeks after a mosquito apparently placed them there.

"I'd put my hand back there and feel them moving. I thought it was blood coursing through my head," said Dallas.

"I could hear them. I actually thought I was going crazy."

'It was weird and traumatic'

Dallas said he likely received the larval infestation while on a trip to Belize this summer. Adult botflies are hairy and look like bees, without bristles. One type, dermatobia hominis, attacks livestock, deer, and humans.

Mosquitoes, stable flies, and other insects are used by female botflies to carry their eggs to the host, where in this case it was Dallas.

"It was weird and traumatic," said Dallas. "I would get this pain that would drop me to my knees."

After a specialist told him he might have shingles, Dallas tried different creams and salves. But the pain got worse, so Dallas returned to Dr Kimball Spence.

'It's much funnier to everyone else'

"When I saw him again, it was pretty obvious something else was going on," said Spence, who could see the spots moving on Dallas' head. "There's an open pit. You see a little activity, not necessarily the larvae, but a fluctuation of the fluid in the pit," Spence said.

The parasites, which were living in a pit 2mm to 3mm wide, were removed on Thursday. His wife teases him about it now.

"It's much funnier to everyone else," Dallas said. "It makes my stomach turn over. It was cruel."

Spence said botfly infections are fairly routine in parts of Central and South America.

 

[eggcetra_farms]

oh wow!

 

[Barb Schuetz]

That's a big EWW!