Hard Lump Under Pullet's Earlobe

[ravensnow]

There's a hard lump under my pullet's earlobe. I searched through many "earlobe" threads on here, but none of them seemed to address exactly what's going on. Please help.

1) Minerva Louise is a black Ameraucana pullet, approximately 15 weeks old. We weighed her last week at 1 lbs, 11.8 oz (which seems to be on track compared to the two-week younger Ameraucana we have). She looks thinner than the other pullets (one more Ameraucana and two much younger Orpingtons), but when we hold her she feels extremely large and substantial compared to the other birds, like she just doesn't have as thick a layer of feathers. It has always been like this.
2) She's acting the same as always, but she has always been "different" compared to my three other pullets. She's more aggressive and more fearful of being touched/picked up than any of the others, but always within what I think of as being normal behavior. We got her at 10 weeks old, and there has been no personality shift since bringing them home.
3) I noticed that one of her earlobes looked bigger than the other one perhaps a week ago, maybe a bit longer. She is the oldest pullet we have, so at first I thought either she was developing "big girl earlobes" in a lop-sided way and things would even out. I also thought that someone might have pecked it and left her a bit swollen and that everything would work itself out. It has always been extremely pale pink, same as the other earlobe. I only managed to touch it today and felt that it was hard, much bigger than I thought, and she didn't like me touching it. The other earlobe feels like soft skin.
4) I haven't noticed any other pullet with a swollen earlobe.
5) There is absolutely no bleeding, injury, broken bones or other sign of trauma.
6) I know of no change that happened to have caused the situation. On Sunday (5 days ago), we found mold in their enclosure under/near their water dish. We removed the chickens, removed all the bedding/loose food, used a 10% bleach solution over the floor and walls, let it air dry for a while, and then put the chickens and new bedding back in. I'm pretty confident that the swelling was present before this.
7) She's been eating the same chick feed as the others, as well as the same water as the others. The chickens were on a liquid Corid treatment that lasted 2.5 weeks, followed by a few days of electrolyte/probiotic water, and now they're on normal water.
8) I haven't seen her poop today. If it would be helpful, I'll go back to the coop and stalk her for a while to get a description/picture.
9) I have not attempted to treat this lump.

12) On Wednesday, we moved them to a plywood and 2x4 coop. There's vinyl flooring on the floor, but the walls are unpainted on the inside. There's oodles of ventilation. I'm using flake style pine shavings from TSC as their bedding. Before that, they were inside the house in an enclosure built from upside-down folding tables lined with a tarp. There was a thicker, plastic sheet in the bottom. I'm using the same bag of pine shavings now as before.

Does anyone have any idea what this is? It feels like the lump exists under her earlobe and towards her side-of-beak/chin area. I'm so worried about her.

 

[azygous]

First of all, as long as she's behaving normally (for her, that is), not lethargic, decent appetite, that's 99% of having a healthy chicken.

Lumps can appear on a chicken on any part and confound us as to what the heck is going on. I have a hen that has a steadily growing hard lump over her right eye, but she has never stopped being normally active, and her appetite is stellar. She's had the lump for half her life. She's nearly twelve years old.

If the lump feels hard like a bone, it's likely a tumor and may be benign as my hen's obviously is. If the lump feels soft like there's fat in it, it may be a cyst. If it feels hard but not hard as a bone, it could be an ear infection and it's full of pus.

Look inside the ear. If it's infected, you are likely to see some dried pus clogging the ear.

Figure out what it feels like to you, look inside the ear, and maybe try to get a better closeup photo of it.

 

[ravensnow]

Thank you so much for your reply. It makes a world of difference to not feel so alone.

I will try and look in her ear tomorrow and feel the lump a bit more. Thanks for the direction.

 

[nightowl223]

First of all, as long as she's behaving normally (for her, that is), not lethargic, decent appetite, that's 99% of having a healthy chicken.

Lumps can appear on a chicken on any part and confound us as to what the heck is going on. I have a hen that has a steadily growing hard lump over her right eye, but she has never stopped being normally active, and her appetite is stellar. She's had the lump for half her life. She's nearly twelve years old.

If the lump feels hard like a bone, it's likely a tumor and may be benign as my hen's obviously is. If the lump feels soft like there's fat in it, it may be a cyst. If it feels hard but not hard as a bone, it could be an ear infection and it's full of pus.

Look inside the ear. If it's infected, you are likely to see some dried pus clogging the ear.

Figure out what it feels like to you, look inside the ear, and maybe try to get a better closeup photo of it.

Seconded.
Sometimes they can get bites or stings, too, where they form bumps that can sometimes become infected, but then resolve themselves and go away - sometimes with no interference from us. I generally lance boils with sterile lancets or blades, treat with antibiotic (usually ointment) and cover. Cysts obviously won't be helped by lancing, and can be made much worse, by accidentally getting germs inside. Tumors, unless they are interfering with chicken life, I just keep a watch on. They are *usually* benign, but even benign tumors can become troublesome if they continue to grow, and interfere with eatng, breathing, etc., and that's when a decision would need to be made with one of those.

 

[ravensnow]

I wanted to give an update about Minerva Louise. She still seems fine.

After feeling both earlobe regions, I have determined that the lump is definitely hard. I couldn't tell the difference in what I was feeling if it was bone hard or not, so I looked in her ears. They're completely clear, and I checked the ears of another of our chickens and they looked the same. So, I guess she likely has a tumor.

I can feel the corners of her beak underneath her skin on the non-lump side, but the lump prevents me from feeling that on the other side. She can open her beak just fine, but I'll keep an eye on that since her Ameraucana cheeks are preventing me from visually seeing how big her tumor is or is getting.

I'm mentioning this just in case it has any bearing, but she tends to shed feathers when she's stressed far more easily than the others. I'm assuming this is just a quirk of hers (she grew up in a pen with feather pickers that did a number on her back and neck), but I did want to mention it in case easy feather shedding combined with tumor growth means something.

Thank you again to everyone who's read this thread or responded.

 

[azygous]

Feather shedding may be relevant or not. What is relevant is that your hen is behaving as a normal, healthy chicken. Time will tell if this tumor is going to interfere with that.

 

[ravensnow]

Hello, everyone. It's taken a long time before I felt able to post an update here. My sweet, scrappy pullet Minerva Louise died around May 12, 2019 at 17 weeks of age.

She started to act "not herself" on the afternoon and evening before her death. She just wanted to sit down instead of explore around with the other pullets. The other Ameraucana would come by and sit with her for a while and keep her company. It was touching to see, even though we didn't know then that it was their last afternoon together. Minerva Louise had a really awful poop (pure yellow liquid), and frantic research on BYC suggested she might have parasite problems, so we went out and got Valbazen (albendazole) and dosed all four pullets that night. She was, in retrospect, partially paralyzed and having trouble moving by nightfall, when we got them their medicine. When we found them in the morning, she had made it to their snuggle pile for her last sleep.

I took her in for a necropsy, and the result was that she had "MYELOID LEUKOSIS (PRESUMPTIVE AVIAN LEUKOSIS VIRUS COMPLEX INFECTION)," but that her ultimate cause of death was likely heart failure. The lump I posted about here was a symptom. I've included images of her necropsy here, just in case this is able to help someone else who is searching for answers.

 

[azygous]

Thanks for posting this update. It provides closure for your thread, and may help others in the future. It's very sad you lost this pullet before her life really started.