- Dec 6, 2013
- 11
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- 77
On Sunday, September 25, I checked my rooster, Alan, once he was up on the roost because he smelled awful, had been walking around with his tail down, and wasn't acting like himself. I checked with a flashlight and saw maggots streaming across what I thought was his butt, idk it was dark and I panicked. I immediately got him into a tub of water and soaked him for 45 minutes, then held him while my mother flushed more out of him with iodine water. I have no idea how he got so bad or what happened, but he had a "pocket" below his breastbone where the majority (we thought) were, and the skin all down his belly was friable and torn and gray/black. We crated him in the garage with a red lamp, I ordered some wonder dust off Amazon, and ran out for some Vetericyn. Because he's pretty large and a bit intimidating, I did all the holding, so while I thought we were getting ahead of it with twice-daily flushings, we weren't. When I finally got a chance to check him myself, I found another pocket of maggots down in his "groin" area, and we did yet another bath on 09/28 and got probably 600 or so big ones out, but no little ones. He stayed in the bath about an hour and was so bad I thought we would have to euthanize him. But he rallied, and he ate, and he drank, and the next bath only got six. When I finally got the Wonder Dust, I did some puffs over him and that dried him up pretty good. He doesn't smell as bad now (though still some), and the daily flushings aren't driving out any maggots, but he has two big gaps where his skin separated from his body and the skin dried hard like fingernails. One is at the top of his belly and the other tunnels almost all the way to his left hip joint. He's walking stretched up like a penguin with his tail dragging, but he is mobile and not very happy to be handled when it's washout time.
My question is, will those granulate in? Do I need to be doing wet to dry packing? Should I put anything at all on it outside of the Vetericyn, which I do twice daily as well as I can on a furious roo? I don't want to create conditions where flies will return, but I also don't want him to be permanently gaped open like that as winter comes on especially. Any advice? There's no suturing him up at this point; the outside skin is far too hard.
I'm sorry, I can't really give you pictures, it's difficult enough to keep him still with two of us both hands on, I'd never be able to get enough light on him and hold a camera at the same time without him struggling and hurting himself.
Edit: He's not on any antibiotics. He refuses anything I put clindamycin (what I had on hand) in, so I stopped wasting it.
My question is, will those granulate in? Do I need to be doing wet to dry packing? Should I put anything at all on it outside of the Vetericyn, which I do twice daily as well as I can on a furious roo? I don't want to create conditions where flies will return, but I also don't want him to be permanently gaped open like that as winter comes on especially. Any advice? There's no suturing him up at this point; the outside skin is far too hard.
I'm sorry, I can't really give you pictures, it's difficult enough to keep him still with two of us both hands on, I'd never be able to get enough light on him and hold a camera at the same time without him struggling and hurting himself.
Edit: He's not on any antibiotics. He refuses anything I put clindamycin (what I had on hand) in, so I stopped wasting it.
