Open wound. Slightly black. Suggestions?

[chookmummy]

Hey all,

We bought our hens a few months ago. They are a few months old themselves and havent started laying yet. After putting them in a separate cage inside the coop for 2-3 weeks, we decided to integrate them into the flock. As we have had the most luck with put them in overnight so they can wake up together, this is what we did. However, we came down later the next morning to find two of them torn up. This was yesterday. The third is fine and back in the separate cage.

My father is an emergency physician, and he said that one of the girls will make a full recovery, but he is less certain about the second. The second is missing most of her skin and some of the muscle looks torn up (see below for size of wound). I know very little about chicken anatomy, so I cant say for certain what is missing from the area. You can see some of her spine, but it doesn't seem to be affected at all (no signs of nerve damage).

Yesterday, it was bleeding badly and rather red. We rinsed it off with water and put polysporin on it and left her overnight. Today, the skin around the wound looks black. Further up her back, the skin looks green with bruising. Some of the muscle looks slightly yellow, but she doesn't smell off or as if there is presence of infection. The portion that is black, further up the back, is just skin. The open wound is further down and looks slightly moist in the picture

Yesterday, she was very sad and holed in on herself, but still drank some water with electrolytes. Today, when supervised with the other injured bird, they are both pecking at food, drinking, and preening as if neither of them are missing portions of their back .

We had a chicken with a severe head wound a few months ago, and she ended up dying because the tissue died and began rotting all around her head. We think we may have caused some of it to die because we used too much iodine, so we would very much so like to prevent that from happening again.

Any suggestions for what to do with the chicken? Is the blackness just dried blood? Or is it dead tissue? My dad says its too early for the tissue to have died completely.

See below for pictures of the second chicken. (The first's wound is very small, so I wont be attaching pictures.) She is pecking at something on the sink counter which is why you cant see her head.

 

[Eggcessive]

It may just be old blood and scabbing. I would use some 2% chlorhexidene or Hibiclens 4% mixed with water to clean the wounds twice a day. Then apply plain Neosporin or Triple Antibiotic Ointment until it is healed. You can clean with saline after initially using the chlorhexidene since it is very mild. When I mix young ones with older birds, I like to use fencing or netting inside the coop to keep the 2 groups separated but seeing each other for a week or two. They need to be close in size as well. There should be multiple feeding and water stations once the fencing is removed so everyone gets a chance to eat and deink.

 

[chookmummy]

It may just be old blood and scabbing. I would use some 2% chlorhexidene or Hibiclens 4% mixed with water to clean the wounds twice a day. Then apply plain Neosporin or Triple Antibiotic Ointment until it is healed. You can clean with saline after initially using the chlorhexidene since it is very mild. When I mix young ones with older birds, I like to use fencing or netting inside the coop to keep the 2 groups separated but seeing each other for a week or two. They need to be close in size as well. There should be multiple feeding and water stations once the fencing is removed so everyone gets a chance to eat and deink.

Ok. Sounds good. I will see what i can do about the chlorheidene and the saline solution. Thanks for that information.

About the integration: unfortunately, they were actually separated and seeing each other for three+ weeks and picking through the bars had stopped. They are actually pretty similar in size, and they also had three feeding sources and two water sources... I cant think of what went wrong

 

[Eggcessive]

Some breeds can be more aggressive than others. Spending time with them when integrating during free ranging can be helpful. Having lots of room inside the coop and run, and hiding places might help too.

 

[Ebony Rose]

I've had hens recover from wounds that appeared far worse. Keep it clean, spray it down with an antibacterial-antilarvicid spray in any COLOR except for red. I personally use purple as it's the easiest to obtain here. Once the danger of spontaneous re-bleeding subsides, she can be back with her flockmates (the ones she gets along with). Expect this area to get hard and leathery and nearly black in color as it scabs over and heals. I don't see enough skin left at the edges to suggest a stitch or two, but if you find enough skin there to cinch the wound some, you might consider doing that to make it a smaller hole to scab over. You will not want to completely seal that wound as it will need to drain. Chicken pus is not liquid like humans produce, theirs is a yellowish cheesy substance, so be mindful of anything that looks like that.
Keeping you and your feathered family in my prayers.

 

[chookmummy]

Keeping you and your feathered family in my prayers.

Thank you so much for the advice!! It's wonderful to hear that other hens have recovered from worse after the situation we had with our other girl. It nice to know that there is some hope.
I appreciate the prayers <3.