What kind of "more severe" injuries have you treated successfully? - graphic photos

[six_chooks_for_now]

Hey all,

Sadly two neighbor dogs got into my flock yesterday. One hen was dead and 16 birds were missing when I arrived home (my neighbor called me and animal control, who came and got the dogs). My husband and I and two sets of neighbors found all but 4 of them by last night - 2 hens and 2 roos (we have heritage roos for meat). Two roosters we found had their tail/back/side feathers torn out and have some bruising on the sides and back, and a small amount of bleeding, but no serious lacerations. One hen we found trapped under a water barrel with a bunch of feathers torn out but otherwise seems ok (aside from acting a bit traumatized). However, this morning one of my hens came back with severe injuries along her back/neck and side, like the skin along the middle of her back had been torn and kind of balled up near her head, puncture wounds, and she had a big laceration on her right side under the wing (consistent with how the dog was attacking the others). I put her down because she was obviously pretty uncomfortable.

But it got me thinking, how do I draw the line between treatable and not treatable with injuries like this? Did I do the right thing? The roos are obviously treatable as they have no serious wounds (that I can see - one is a bit depressed in his behaviour so I'm not sure if he has internal damage). And what kind of predator type injuries have you been able to successfully treat? I can post photos of my hen but I wasn't sure if it was too graphic? I'm pretty upset about everything and it was our first predator incident since having our birds :/

 

[AidKD]

That's to bad! Sorry about your birds. Can I see a pic of the girl you had to put down? I think you did the right thing on putting her down. When it comes severe injuries I think it kinda depends on what you think is right. Whenever you have something happen, like happened to your girl, I think it would be best to put them out of their misery rather than try to treat something that you can't treat and end up putting them in more pain. There is a line between treatable and untreatable that only you can make. You know your birds best and what's best for them. Hope I could help!

 

[six_chooks_for_now]

Thanks - I felt it was what I should do. It just seemed like too much damage to her. This morning I was reading about someone who had treated fox injuries and I started to wonder what kind of injuries were humanely treatable with a general success rate in case we encounter something like this again. Here are some pics - you can’t see the skin on the back/neck super well. The first two were right when I found her and the last from after I put her down. I could get a picture of the neck if that would be helpful too, we haven’t gotten rid of the body yet. You can see the side laceration in the last pic okay - it looked like it had gone through two “layers”?

 

[mscallisto]

Oh my, they sure did a number on her. It's hard to draw that line. I recently had a fox make my hens a buffet and only 3 survived. Naturally I tried nursing them. One that had worse wounds than yours seemed to be improving, but one evening in a 4 hour period took a dive and passed. The other 2 seem to be getting better. But I think it depends on their comfort/pain level, perceived survivability, and unfortunately your free time to spend the attention on them. With us being small flock keepers, you grow attached. With larger farms they don't really get attached, so injured chickens aren't a debate. Plus, a chicken one of us thinks would have survived, another would think the opposite. I think it comes down to if you feel you did the right thing.

 

[AidKD]

Oh my, they sure did a number on her. It's hard to draw that line. I recently had a fox make my hens a buffet and only 3 survived. Naturally I tried nursing them. One that had worse wounds than yours seemed to be improving, but one evening in a 4 hour period took a dive and passed. The other 2 seem to be getting better. But I think it depends on their comfort/pain level, perceived survivability, and unfortunately your free time to spend the attention on them. With us being small flock keepers, you grow attached. With larger farms they don't really get attached, so injured chickens aren't a debate. Plus, a chicken one of us thinks would have survived, another would think the opposite. I think it comes down to if you feel you did the right thing.

I agree!

 

[six_chooks_for_now]

@mscallisto & @AidKD thank you for the responses. I thought I did the right thing but now I’m second guessing myself. I was super concerned about leaving her too long in that state if she was suffering so I didn’t think to research online first. I didn’t really know it was an option to try and treat wounds such as those, so I’m trying to make a more informed decision if there’s a next time, or if we do find the last hen. I definitely understand everyone will have a different opinion, so not trying to get a hard answer per say. Do you have any pictures of your flock’s injuries and how they are healing? Do they seem to bear the injuries while they are recovering well?

 

[mscallisto]

Here's my post with some pictures. I've come here to ask for advice on treating, so my thread could give you some pointers for the future. Chickens are prey for so many animals, your bound to see this again unfortunately.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/tangled-with-a-fox.1408387/page-3#post-23127604

 

[six_chooks_for_now]

@mscallisto thank you for sharing the thread