Swollen ear, pale comb, panting… been going on for a while and we’ve tried everything! Help please!

[ChickInnMama]

Good morning! I have posted about my girl Charlotte a number of times for this same issue, this may be a little long because I’m trying to give the full picture of what we’ve tried . She has a swollen ear and she gets bubbles in her eye on and off, she also seems to have rubbed off a lot of feathers on her neck and she pants a lot and her comb gets quite pale. I had people mention MG (sorry, don’t remember the long word that that’s an abbreviation for). Someone suggested that for that we needed to get a specific medicine Tysion (I think I spelled that right) so I used the link they gave and bought that. But before we gave her that we had tried regular amoxicillin (well, fishmox is what I could get my hands on), people said that wouldn’t work for MG and that we needed that other Tysion med. we ordered the Tysion but while we were waiting another one of my chickens had bright red bloody poop so after asking here about that we decided to treat the whole flock with Corid. We did that and then we wanted to give her a break before we did the tysion because she’d had so much medicine pumped into her already. We are on day 6 of the Tysion (the package said 7 days). We’ve been putting her back out in the coop at night so I can clean the crate she’s in and she can be with her little girlies (she’s super bonded with them) but last night when we checked on them she was panting a ton and her comb was so pale it was almost white. We brought her back inside for the night. She’s out right now, I have to clean her crate out, and all she seems to want is to be back inside. We live in Florida and it’s almost feeling like 100-102 in our area during the day. So it’s still super hot at night and I’m concerned about her making it through the summer here when it’s going to get even hotter. Does anyone have any ideas on what else to do? Has anyone dealt with this? Would dewormer possibly help? Could it be a worm in her ear/sinus cavity? All the other girls got dewormed but she was on antibiotics at the time so she hasn’t been dewormed yet and I didn’t want to just keep pumping medicine into her. Oh and yes, we’ve tried to drain her ear and that seemed to only make it worse. I’ll see if I can get a picture to upload of her ear. I know it’s got to be more going on than just a swollen ear, but that’s the one symptom that alerted us to this issue again (she had the same issues last May/June but we did antibiotics and it cleared up after about a month, this time it’s not clearing up). Also, in case this helps… they free range during the day, we have a lot of waterers out around the yard for them and we have fans that we turn on in the coops, so if they want to go in there and cool off they can. They go out as soon as the suns out and they just go up when it’s dark. They’re on regular crumbles and we also give them some worms every morning that I scatter for them. We just started putting ACV back into a few of their waterers but not all of them so they have choice, though Charlotte is inside with her water with Tysion in it during the day right now. Thanks so much!

 

[Barnette]

You have your hands full! Poor girl - this sounds pretty serious. Have you already looked into a vet in your area that treats birds? I would try VetRX and rosemary for her breathing, some red meat and sunflower seeds for the pale comb and a vitamin boost, and the cure-all NutriDrench. You're doing the right thing for this sweet girl! Keep us posted, and I'll do some more research for you to see what can be done.

 

[ChickInnMama]

You have your hands full! Poor girl - this sounds pretty serious. Have you already looked into a vet in your area that treats birds? I would try VetRX and rosemary for her breathing, some red meat and sunflower seeds for the pale comb and a vitamin boost, and the cure-all NutriDrench. You're doing the right thing for this sweet girl! Keep us posted, and I'll do some more research for you to see what can be done.

Thank you!! Do I give her the red meat raw or cooked? And how much is too much? Sorry… I’ve seen people do that but I haven’t ever given my girls meat we have one vet in our area that sees chickens but they’re very expensive and since we’ve been to our vet at least once a week from the end of February until about 3 weeks ago for one animal or another (we have a lot of animals and some are just getting older and require meds now) I can’t really swing taking her in right now, plus the vet is always weeks or a month out for chickens . I have Nutridrench so I will add that to her water as soon as we finish the tysion (tomorrow is the last day for that). I guess we will keep her in the house in the crate for now… I hate to put her out in the heat but I know she misses her buddies and they miss her. One thing I forgot to mention is that sometimes there seems to be a little crusty, dried stuff on her ear like it drains a little? But then we can never get anything out and it just seems swollen outward, like the ear hole is so tightly closed that you can’t see in but nothing is bulging out like I’ve seen in other videos where all this pus comes out. Her ear usually warm to the touch, but she doesn’t like us touching it. Thank you again for your help! This is my favorite little hen, we lost my other favorite out of the blue in October and I really don’t want to Charlotte but I also don’t want her to suffer

 

[Barnette]

Thank you!! Do I give her the red meat raw or cooked? And how much is too much? Sorry… I’ve seen people do that but I haven’t ever given my girls meat we have one vet in our area that sees chickens but they’re very expensive and since we’ve been to our vet at least once a week from the end of February until about 3 weeks ago for one animal or another (we have a lot of animals and some are just getting older and require meds now) I can’t really swing taking her in right now, plus the vet is always weeks or a month out for chickens . I have Nutridrench so I will add that to her water as soon as we finish the tysion (tomorrow is the last day for that). I guess we will keep her in the house in the crate for now… I hate to put her out in the heat but I know she misses her buddies and they miss her. One thing I forgot to mention is that sometimes there seems to be a little crusty, dried stuff on her ear like it drains a little? But then we can never get anything out and it just seems swollen outward, like the ear hole is so tightly closed that you can’t see in but nothing is bulging out like I’ve seen in other videos where all this pus comes out. Her ear usually warm to the touch, but she doesn’t like us touching it. Thank you again for your help! This is my favorite little hen, we lost my other favorite out of the blue in October and I really don’t want to Charlotte but I also don’t want her to suffer

you're doing the right things. For the meat, I would give her a little bit of clean, raw meat. Not too much, but it should have lots of proteins and vitamins. So, you have no idea what's wrong with her ear? Is it possible you could get a close-up pic? I was thinking a fungal infection

 

[Barnette]

Also, I would give her a little honey to reduce swelling and fever. You can dissolve a bit in water or but it in a treat. Then, I think, you can put a bit on her ear topically to reduce swelling. Just make sure you clean it off well later.

 

[ChickInnMama]

These are the best pictures I could get today… I have to try to take a picture and move her feathers at the same time and she’s wiggly my son did help me hold her but it was still the best we could do. I got some organic, grass fed ground beef for her so I’ll give her a little of that. And I do have honey, so I’ll put a little of that on her ear. Thanks!

 

[Barnette]

Great! Hope it helps