White spots on my hen's comb (PIC)

[Nu2Chicks]

My year old hen has developed white spots on her comb. She's semi-lethargic, but no other signs and she feels of normal weight.
We don't have temps below freezing so it's not frostbite. If you have an idea what it is and/or how to treat, please advise. Thanks
for looking.

 

[robin416]

That's probably Favus. Get some athletes foot cream and apply that, it should knock it down. Its not uncommon to see it when things have been wet and warm.

 

[Nu2Chicks]

Thanks, that makes sense. We just came off of a hot summer where they are cooled with lots of misters. So I assume that is some sort of fungus? Don't think I have
any athletes foot cream on hand but I have other anti-fungal ointments.

 

[Cetawin]

Make sure anything you put on her has no ingredient for pain relief or with the word "caine" in its name. That is lethal to them.

 

[Nu2Chicks]

Got it thanks... no analgesics. I have Ketoconazole cream (Nizerol) that I can try until I can pick up some athletes foot med.

I'm suspecting I have something more going on with the whole flock (9 hens- 1 roo), as even though no others have these spots, I am also not getting but a couple of eggs every other day, and the moult that I had attributed this to has completed several weeks ago.

 

[elmo]

That picture does not look like the whitish raised areas on the combs of my chickens that were the first symptoms of fowl pox...however... be alert. If the white spots progress to black spots, then fluidy blisters, you're probably looking at fowl pox, too.

 

[Nu2Chicks]

What did you do for your chicken/s with foul pox?

 

[elmo]

With fowl pox, all you really can do is offer supportive care (it's a virus). Isolate the affected bird (if you can). Fowl pox spreads by mosquitoes, but it can also spread bird to bird.

Usually the pox forms on the combs, wattles and sometimes the legs (unfeathered parts of the birds are where the mosquitoes can bite). Sometimes, though, the pox forms in the bird's mouth and throat, and this is called "wet pox." This can be deadly if it gets to the point where the bird can't eat, drink or breathe.

Sometimes the lesions can become infected by bacteria, just like chicken pox in humans, and you can give antibiotics for this.

The white spots that started on my birds were flat, not raised like the bumps in the picture of your hen. Still, I thought I'd mention it, just in case. Good luck! I hope you figure out what's going on with your bird and get it treated.

 

[Nu2Chicks]

Thanks for the info on the pox. So far she is the only one with any spots. I'll keep an eye on the rest though thanks for your post.

 

[theperdews]

Did you ever figure out what caused your chicken's bumps? We just had a similar looking group of bumps appear on one of our EEs, and noticed that the only pictures that came up from a Google search were also pea combed chickens. I just posted about our results today in another thread. Here is what we found out from a vet trip:

We had a veterinary appointment for a horse, so just took the chicken with us because we needed to know if it was infections due to an upcoming show. My daughter has been excited all winter/spring to take 4 chickens to the 4-H Fair, and so we didn't want to just "wait and see," and either be in quarantine or make other kids' chickens sick.

The vet thought it looked like a sebaceous excretion, but it was really "attached" and wouldn't come off easily. He got a scalpel and took a scraping to look at under the microscope. After looking, he still felt it was sebaceous and not parasitic.

He thinks that this chicken metabolized the dewormer differently than the other chickens, as she had been dewormed 2 days before onset. We knew that the other examples we had seen that looked like this also happened to be EE/Ameraucanas (pea combed chickens). So, possibly these chickens are a little different in how they metabolize dewormers from the Fenbendazole/Albendazole family. It would be interesting to know whether the other chickens we've seen pictures of with this had been recently dewormed with that.

So, we will see if it goes away in a few days when she has finished metabilizing the dewormer. He suggested putting mineral oil on her comb to see if it helps us scrape off the crud by softening it.

Toni