When to remove stitches?

[Sunny Side Up]

Should I give it a certain number of days? Or observe the site for particular indications of complete healing? What would that be?

I have 4 cockerels I caponized on Tuesday, the incisions in the skin were stitched with regular cotton thread. I don't want to remove the thread too soon, but not too late either. Please advise, thank you.

 

[Ariel301]

I don't know if it is the same on birds, but the standard for mammals and people is 10-14 days. I just had four surgeries in the last month, and the stitches were pulled at 9-10 days. I'd keep an eye on it and pull earlier if the skin starts growing over the stitches, one of my incisions did that, and they had to dig around a lot and missed part of the stitches so I had to go back and have them dig some more, and that was very uncomfortable!

 

[fldiver97]

Depends....in most animals and humans sutures are removed 7-10 days out. I have seen sutures pulled after 5 days. I would check on the healing after 4-5 days. As the other posters said, you don't want the sutures covered with skin.... I would think about a week should be a good estimate, I would think the incision is fairly small. Now - if the sutures are several separate threads you can pull one when you think it's ben healing up well. If that spot looks good the next day, pull them all. If it is a running stitch you can't do it as you pull the entire suture when you cut the knot and pull. Look at the incisions, usually you can see that the skin has healed quite a bit....If you see little gaps in the skin between the stitches it is probably too soon to pull. If you happen to pull the suture and it seems too soon you can try a butterfly/steristrip (you can get those at Walgreens, CVS etc.)? Not sure how well that works on a chicken but I've used it in other critters. I hope someone that actually has done this with chickens will reply....