Injured chick advice

So, this is a 1-2 day old chick that escaped their enclosure and must have gotten pecked or grabbed by a hen. I found her cold and alone yesterday afternoon. She has wounds on both sides of her head and honestly, I cant even tell what I’m looking at. It could be dirty, scabby skin or it could be skull. She’s struggling to keep her eyes open and I’m not sure if she can hear considering her ears may be gone. We put her in a brooder with a heat lamp, food and electrolyte water. She pooped twice and drank a lot of water but still hasn’t eaten anything. We “cleaned” it a bit with warm water and dial soap and put a comfrey/plantain salve on her. We’re thinking of doing the same again this afternoon unless anyone has a better idea. Any advice is appreciated!

Poor little chick! That looks super rough. Maybe see if you can get some food into her so she has the energy to heal? Egg yolk and electrolyte water in a syringe (needle-less) is an easy way. This video shows how to do it safely, as if you're not careful, they can aspirate.
We had one of ours that looked really rough and like she wasn't going to make it and did this and she bounced back right away. Has gone on to become the biggest and craziest of the bunch.

Sounds like you're doing all the right things, though I'll admit I'm new to this chicken thing. Dealt with lots of nasty wounds on animals though. I would be cautious with the comfrey salve. Plantain is awesome for drawing out infection and helping heal. But comfrey can sometimes encourage things to heal from the outside in and lead to an abscess. I avoid it on deep wounds. If you can do plantain alone, that might be better. Even just crushing up a plantain leaf and sticking it on the wound will help. If you can get it to stay on, might be tricky with a chick depending how active she is. Obviously watch for signs of infection (heat, swelling, pus). The salve you have is still probably better than nothing, maybe the plantain will balance the aforementioned issue with the comfrey.
Hope she heals up quickly! I think they're more resilient beings than they appear to be.

Thank you! Ill try the egg yolk after work. I doubt she’s eaten anything yet since being born. Also thinking aloe gel could be perfect for her head. I was also worried about sealing in infection with the salve, but it’s the only thing we had on hand (didn’t think of aloe at the time!) and i was hoping the dial soap was enough to disinfect.

Howdy!
I'm always impressed by how tough critters, especially babies, can be. They bounce back from amazing things as if they expect the world to be hard, but worth the fight.
To me, it looks like a serious wound.
I appreciate that you're trying to keep your little chick from going into heavy shock, and encourage the use of electrolyte-dosed water and any sort of food you can convince it to eat.
Chicks can manage for several days off the absorbed yolk, so there's no immediate danger of starvation. Giving it water, however you prepare it, and access to food is putting it on the road to recovery.

If the chick starts to eat and perks up a bit, it should be fine.
If the chick can't hear, it will figure out some way to adjust. Maybe it'll feel for the sound, or be really good at watching the rest of the flock.
I will council to give every critter a chance, as a rule. Do the best you can with what you have, and what you understand, and let it go.

My personal choices would be to go with my favorite feed store medication for wounds  - it's a sulfa/activated charcoal powder that clots open wounds, stopping bleeding and forms a hard, protective "scab" that allows the wound to heal just fine. I use it on my flock because I can "puff" it in the general direction of the wound, and be certain that the bird is treated.

Otherwise, a careful and attentive handler is worth any possible wonder treatment. Just use common sense, treat the symptoms, and keep the peeper warm, with water available.
My thoughts and hopes are with you.

Kristine Keeney wrote:Howdy!
I'm always impressed by how tough critters, especially babies, can be. They bounce back from amazing things as if they expect the world to be hard, but worth the fight.
To me, it looks like a serious wound.
I appreciate that you're trying to keep your little chick from going into heavy shock, and encourage the use of electrolyte-dosed water and any sort of food you can convince it to eat.
Chicks can manage for several days off the absorbed yolk, so there's no immediate danger of starvation. Giving it water, however you prepare it, and access to food is putting it on the road to recovery.

If the chick starts to eat and perks up a bit, it should be fine.
If the chick can't hear, it will figure out some way to adjust. Maybe it'll feel for the sound, or be really good at watching the rest of the flock.
I will council to give every critter a chance, as a rule. Do the best you can with what you have, and what you understand, and let it go.

My personal choices would be to go with my favorite feed store medication for wounds  - it's a sulfa/activated charcoal powder that clots open wounds, stopping bleeding and forms a hard, protective "scab" that allows the wound to heal just fine. I use it on my flock because I can "puff" it in the general direction of the wound, and be certain that the bird is treated.

Otherwise, a careful and attentive handler is worth any possible wonder treatment. Just use common sense, treat the symptoms, and keep the peeper warm, with water available.
My thoughts and hopes are with you.

Im happy to announce that “Squinty” is doing great! We’ve been putting aloe on her wound twice a day so far and see no signs of infection. Shes eating, drinking, running, jumping and pooping. She’s really not far behind the rest of them developmentally, just less attached to mom and a little less coordinated. Shes a much more aggressive bug hunter though! We’ve had 3 short supervised play dates with mom and the siblings out in some grass and nobody has seemed at all interested in pecking at her. We will start putting comfrey salve on her regularly now to help grow new skin and actually might let her start sleeping in the nest box with the rest of them. Once we feel confident about the situation, I think we will integrate her with them full time. Its amazing how well shes doing for having a large visible piece of skull showing!

That is wonderful and amazing that she is recovering so well! Good work, Brody! Cool to know that aloe worked so well. I'm curious, did you use gel straight from the plant? Or a purchased aloe product?

Howdy!
I'm very glad to hear that Squinty is doing well and, mostly, caught up to the other chicks.
You did great taking care of her for which, I'm sure, she will never really show much appreciation.
Well, that depends on your chicken keeping style, I guess.

Best thoughts for continued good health for everyone involved!

Heather Sharpe wrote:That is wonderful and amazing that she is recovering so well! Good work, Brody! Cool to know that aloe worked so well. I'm curious, did you use gel straight from the plant? Or a purchased aloe product?

Gel fresh from the plant. The only downside was trying to work with small amounts of it. It was like a goober and didn’t spread very easily.

Well, the Squinty saga came to a tragic and unexpected end yesterday afternoon... these damn birds really can put one through an emotional rollercoaster.

She had been improving daily for almost a week. We had her out in the yard with her siblings and mom in the afternoons and she was actually more independent and a better hunter than the rest. We had her sleeping with them in the nest box at night since nobody could see to pick on her, although even in the daytime nobody seemed to be interested in her head.

Yesterday morning before work, I noticed she seemed tired or weak, and when feeding her, her aim seemed off. She kept missing to the left. Like a busy working moron, I figured she would be fine with a little more rest. We also had another extremely weak chick on the nest box, so I put her in the brooder with Squinty hoping they could rest up together. My wife checked on them on her lunch break and the one chick had already died, a total mystery. She had also seemed “off” the day before, but I downplayed it... She said Squinty seemed fine then, so she left.

I came home 3 hours later and Squinty was wrecked. She was splayed out flat with her eyes closed, totally unable to control her head. I desperately tried to get her to drink water but she wouldn’t. I couldn’t get her to eat either. I brought her to her family hoping they would perk her up and that didn’t work. I googled and came up with wry neck possibly from vitamin E deficiency. Sped off to the store to get some vitamin E. Came back and did actually manage to get a tiny bit to go down. But at that point, she was gasping for air and completely exhausted. She died in my hands as I was trying to save her...

I’m still having a hard time comprehending it. I mean, day 1 of her life and she literally gets scalped. Half her skull is showing, shes cold, alone and afraid. She pulls through that like a total warrior to the point of being more aggressive and independent than the “healthy” chicks. A few days later, as I was introducing her to yard for the first time, my wife let our dog out. I was on my knees staring down at Squinty and suddenly there was a Texas Heeler skidding into the mix, literally snapping at the chick about an inch away. I pinned her to the ground in an instant and saved Squinty yet again. Thought she was indestructible. Thought she was going to be a really cool chicken with a really cool story. Somehow, our little champion avoided horrible deaths twice in her first week only to succumb to wry neck over the course of about 18 hours. Unreal...

I did learn though. Apparently wry neck can be caused from genetics, head injuries, toxins or vitamin E deficiency. I dont know about her genetics, but obviously she had head trauma. She also could have ate something disagreeable outside, who knows. And the deficiency is totally possible. I was so happy to get her eating scrambled eggs/yogurt/electrolyte mixture on day 2 that I forgot the importance of proper chick feed. We fed her the mixture 1-2 times a day, she hunted bugs dropping from the heat lamp in the brooder, she hunted bugs in the yard in the afternoon, but she didn’t eat much chick starter at all. Maybe that was the cause of wry neck. Or, maybe it was something with her head injury... I dont know.

I am so so sorry.

A few years ago I posted about a broody chicken with a massive head injury here to get advice.  The chicken recovered and even went on to raise another batch of chicks.  After the chicks were hatched and about a week old, a possum massacred the happy little family.  It was so horrible after being so happy about her recovery.

When you go through all that effort and it ends that way is extra painful sometimes. The extra care invested builds more of a bond.

I really hate that this happened to you.

Brody, I am so sorry for your loss. That sounds absolutely heart wrenching to lose Squinty after she had been doing so well. It really sounds like you were doing the very best you could for her, as evidenced by the fact she even survived the head injury thanks to your care. I know it's not much comfort, but it also sounds like she got to live a better life than many chickens ever experience. She got to be with her family out in the sunshine and fresh air, dig in the dirt and hunt bugs. She also had humans who obviously cared deeply for her looking after her.

I obviously don't know what went wrong with Squinty or the other chick either, but I doubt it was your fault. I know it's easy to feel like that with baby chicks. Even though they're a different species, I think they probably play on the same part of our nervous system and emotions as baby humans do. So it's only natural to have intense feelings about them, especially when things go wrong. The uncertainty about it doesn't help the hard feels either, I imagine. Big hugs.

Tina Hillel wrote:I am so so sorry.

A few years ago I posted about a broody chicken with a massive head injury here to get advice.  The chicken recovered and even went on to raise another batch of chicks.  After the chicks were hatched and about a week old, a possum massacred the happy little family.  It was so horrible after being so happy about her recovery.

When you go through all that effort and it ends that way is extra painful sometimes. The extra care invested builds more of a bond.

I really hate that this happened to you.

I totally agree. I feel like we bonded much more than we did with the other chicks. She treated us like her mom more than the hen. It was painful and unfortunate, but as long as I can learn and grow from it, I dont feel its a total loss. And although I’ll never know for sure what happened, I did learn a few things throughout the process.

Heather Sharpe wrote:Brody, I am so sorry for your loss. That sounds absolutely heart wrenching to lose Squinty after she had been doing so well. It really sounds like you were doing the very best you could for her, as evidenced by the fact she even survived the head injury thanks to your care. I know it's not much comfort, but it also sounds like she got to live a better life than many chickens ever experience. She got to be with her family out in the sunshine and fresh air, dig in the dirt and hunt bugs. She also had humans who obviously cared deeply for her looking after her.

I obviously don't know what went wrong with Squinty or the other chick either, but I doubt it was your fault. I know it's easy to feel like that with baby chicks. Even though they're a different species, I think they probably play on the same part of our nervous system and emotions as baby humans do. So it's only natural to have intense feelings about them, especially when things go wrong. The uncertainty about it doesn't help the hard feels either, I imagine. Big hugs.

I have been struggling a bit with the thought that it may have been my fault. I mean it’s totally possible, for several different reasons. But it also equally could have been something completely out of my control. And there’s no way to know, so I’ll just have to let it go and just learn and grow from the situation. I’ve heard the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I certainly had good intentions... I just hope her last moments weren’t hell for her.

I have been struggling a bit with the thought that it may have been my fault. I mean it’s totally possible, for several different reasons. But it also equally could have been something completely out of my control. And there’s no way to know, so I’ll just have to let it go and just learn and grow from the situation. I’ve heard the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I certainly had good intentions... I just hope her last moments weren’t hell for her.

I am so very sorry for your loss.
I had gotten attached to the idea of Squinty, since I hadn't met her. I raise chicks every year and have had versions of Squinty (random death for either no really good reason, or random death for very good reasons that I didn't know to look for previously). It's never easy.

One of the benefits of both raising animals and having experience with wild medical situations is that I can understand what you're going through, and have some information that may help you to try to make sense of things.
Squinty's passing was, more likely than not, painless.  She went to sleep and didn't wake up.
The good thing about chicks being so precocious is that they go charging into the world with no idea of what's going on or what to expect. She didn't know that her experiences were significantly different from those of her nest mates, nor did she have to deal with any great amounts of confusion or fear. This was what the world was for her. She didn't know that things were supposed to be different.

Now, that may not set your mind at ease. It's the best I have, and what I use to help me when I'm holding a chick who is/was passing. It's one of the reasons why I do silly things for my birds, even if they are headed for the freezer.  

Did you cause the situation to get worse? Maybe. Possibly. I would vote for 'Not', though. Squinty had issues from the time she cracked her shell. It happens and it's sad, but it's a learning experience.
I doubt you will ever make that particular mistake again. If you're anything like me, you will make many, many more mistakes, and some of the will be painful learning experiences, but they all help you to learn How To Handle Chickens.
It gets better.
I hope you don't blame yourself for not knowing. You did the best you could with the information you had. That's the important part.
Squinty will be a part of every hatched chick family you and your family raise from now on.  

I am so very sorry for your loss.
I had gotten attached to the idea of Squinty, since I hadn't met her. I raise chicks every year and have had versions of Squinty (random death for either no really good reason, or random death for very good reasons that I didn't know to look for previously). It's never easy.

One of the benefits of both raising animals and having experience with wild medical situations is that I can understand what you're going through, and have some information that may help you to try to make sense of things.
Squinty's passing was, more likely than not, painless.  She went to sleep and didn't wake up.
The good thing about chicks being so precocious is that they go charging into the world with no idea of what's going on or what to expect. She didn't know that her experiences were significantly different from those of her nest mates, nor did she have to deal with any great amounts of confusion or fear. This was what the world was for her. She didn't know that things were supposed to be different.

Now, that may not set your mind at ease. It's the best I have, and what I use to help me when I'm holding a chick who is/was passing. It's one of the reasons why I do silly things for my birds, even if they are headed for the freezer.  

Did you cause the situation to get worse? Maybe. Possibly. I would vote for 'Not', though. Squinty had issues from the time she cracked her shell. It happens and it's sad, but it's a learning experience.
I doubt you will ever make that particular mistake again. If you're anything like me, you will make many, many more mistakes, and some of the will be painful learning experiences, but they all help you to learn How To Handle Chickens.
It gets better.
I hope you don't blame yourself for not knowing. You did the best you could with the information you had. That's the important part.
Squinty will be a part of every hatched chick family you and your family raise from now on.  

Thank you for your consolation! It all certainly has been a learning experience for me and I view that as a positive. And I definitely dont blame myself for not knowing/ignorance. What I do blame myself for is not being there more for them. It seems that I cant get through a full work day without coming home to new chicken issues. If I was here, I could check throughout the day and correct issues quickly instead of coming home and wondering if it just happened 5 minutes ago or if its been like this for 8 hours...

Either way, I’m doing my best at this moment, I’m giving them my heart, time and effort, I’m learning from the situation and whatever chicks survive will probably be real champions!