Wattle injury? - What IS this??

[amscrib]

Yesterday I was rounding up the ladies when I noticed that my 1 yo Speckled Sussex had (what looked like) poo or mud on her wattle. I scooped her up and I found a 1.5" hard "thing" protruding out from her wattle on the top and down near the bottom where her wattle attaches to her neck. (In the pic above you can see it up near her "chin" and down near my thumb) The "thing" didn't appear to be hurting her (although she didn't really like me messing with her wattle). My husband got a pair of pliers and some snips and we cut away at it and extracted it from her wattle and found that it was very hard and sort of flaked off when cut (for you horse lovers out there it had the look and feel of a piece of horse hoof trimmed off by the farrier). Again, cutting the "thing" didn't appear to bother the hen at all. It did seem to be attached to her wattle where it went through the skin and sort of had to be peeled off during extraction, but there was no blood or puss or anything (although she did NOT like that part-must have hurt).

After we were done we cleaned it out as best we could and put some Vetericyn on it. I put her down and she went and had a few sips of water and a layer pellet or two and then (b/c it was late afternoon) hopped up on her roost with the rest of the girls and went to bed.

She's been acting fine lately and lays about every other day. If I could post the images you'd see that her eyes are clear and her wattle doesn't look inflamed or infected or anything (although she is a bit dirty from scratching through cow poop!) We did have one incident in August/Sept (months ago!) in which she had a sickly spell. One day she appeared sleepy and uncomfortable and had a swollen crop and some wattle swelling. I thought she had an impacted crop so she spent two days in a dog crate in the barn eating olive oil and soaked layer pellets - then she bounced back, started laying and seemed right as rain!

Has anyone seen anything like this? Is it possible that she was injured or ate something (like a horse hoof!) in the fall and it ruptured her crop or...or...something and I just now was able to see it? Could the "thing" have been produced by her body like scar tissue or something? I'm just sort of puzzled by the whole event.

Below is a pic of the biggest piece that we pulled out.

Thanks folks!

 

[amscrib]

one of my co-workers today suggested that maybe she was impaled on whatever the "thing" was....