Case Study: Dog Attack 2

If you scroll through Facebook chicken groups dog attacks are common. Most of us have dogs and some seem surprised that they have to train them, or restrict their access, so they don’t harm their flock.

Managing shock is critical in the first 24 hours. It can be life-threatening because the body is not getting enough blood flow, and the cells and organs don’t get enough oxygen and nutrients to function properly. Shock requires immediate treatment: keep the patient warm, quiet and separated from the flock in a sick bay where you can monitor progress. Hydration is more important than food in the first day or so.

After any predator attack you’ll want to do a thorough exam, checking for bleeding, punctures, bruises or fractures, and treat as needed.

Dogs can cause significant damage, both internal and external, with their teeth and clamping jaws. Another issue is the risk of infection from bacteria carried in their saliva. Monitoring for infection is important as it can hinder recovery and potentially lead to death.

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My friend Tracy (and her partner Keith) have featured in a number of my posts. She’s my go-to carpenter and handy person for all my chicken projects. They were out of town for six weeks and left their house, chickens and two dogs (Eddy, an older Great Dane and Basco, a young Mastiff x) in the care of Tracy’s sister, Sherry. Their flock is penned and the dogs have usually been good with the birds.

Two weeks into her housekeeping stint Sherry went out to deal with the chickens and noticed one of them had an accumulation of poop around her vent feathers. She picked up the hen for closer examination unaware that the puppy had slipped out of the house. Before she knew it, the dog had jumped up to investigate the hen who, in her panic, flew out of her hands. In a flash, Basco had torn off a chunk of skin from Bong’s side under her wing.

Sherry searched about the house for basic first aid supplies and even went to the vet to see if they had any products for sale. No joy on either account. Good thing I happened by shortly after the incident and having a well stocked first aid kit was able to play traveling vet for the next few days.

Sherry had set Bong up in the shower stall of the bathroom. At my first visit the patient was alert and showed no sign of shock. The missing skin was significant but not bloody or deep. I brought Vetericyn antibacterial spray and antibiotic Polysporin to apply to the wound. Unfortunately I didn’t have Meloxicam to manage her pain.

I asked Sherry to keep notes and take photos of Bong’s progress and hoped she would fully recover.

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Day 1

Bong has tolerated me dropping 1 mm of electrolyte liquid on her beak one drop at a time lapping it up to the last drop. She pecked some scratch out of my hand. I think she’ll allow me to apply Polysporin.

Day 2

Her feathers are wet because I tried to rinse off some poop. She is still alert, active and taking water. The skin flap has shrunk considerably since I first snipped it off yesterday morning. I removed it because it was originally 4” long and her feathers were dragging along the floor by her side.

Day 5

She is definitely still drinking water. She picked a bit at the iceberg lettuce and an apple, but doesn’t seem interested in anything else. The black area just looks like dried blood. I don’t think I’ve ever seen infected flesh that was black so I’m not sure I would recognize it. There was a puncture at that spot.

Day 6

This morning was interesting: when I was treating her wound I lifted the feathers off the dark part at the top. She actually turned around. I’m not sure exactly what she was trying to do, but she was trying to get involved. She didn’t pick at the wound but did seem to run a couple of feather shafts back through her beak and picked at a couple of feathers along the edge with debris in them.

Bong ate grapes which were a hit. I cut them in half hoping to make them more appealing but she was ignoring them, so I decided to squeeze some juice from one on her beak and that worked like a charm. She immediately went for the dish of grapes and gobbled two down. She wasn’t interested in canned dog food or four different flavours of yoghurt.

Day 10

She has been eating five or six grapes daily and about a quarter of a head of iceberg lettuce. Her droppings were becoming formed like little snakes so I figured she had to be eating some pellets even though I couldn’t tell. It finally occurred to me to weigh her food each day and sure enough she’s eating. She doesn’t appear to be drinking water from the dish so I’m hoping that as long as she has more grapes and iceberg lettuce than she can eat, that she’s getting enough water from them. She’s also gotten more feisty/opinionated.

Day 11

Today I found some pieces of scab. You can see where it’s a little raw where she’s picked off the scab but other than that, it seems to be coming along nicely.

Day 14 

Bong seems to be doing well except she keeps picking her scabs and the Vetericyn spray solution drips red off her. I’m assuming she’s picking so much because it’s itchy so I’m trying to keep it as moist as possible. In the last couple of days there was a dried up bit of skin with a feather on it that I snipped off. It was in the area that was weighing her down.

Day 15

She’s being extremely patient while being examined as compared to how objectionable she has been over the last few days. She was being so patient that I was able to feel around and check the area on the inside of her thigh where it meets her body, which I hadn’t been able to do before. I wasn’t sure what I was feeling, probably just crusty feathers. I wanted to take a look so I decided to hold her like football. Amazingly she tolerated that. Unfortunately, I should’ve done it on the other side of my body, or sat down with her on my lap, because the area I wanted to see was against my body. I was able to take the opportunity while I had her feet in the air to treat her for scaly leg mites with Vaseline.

She’s still not interested in anything other than iceberg lettuce, grapes and pellets. I’m offering her different things each day but she doesn’t touch them. I don’t think I’ve measured her consumption of pellets for a few days, but she was eating two tablespoons in 24 hours. I’ll measure the next 24 hours to see if that’s gone up at all. Her poop is well formed. It would be nice if all chicken poop was like that – a lot less messy.

Her keel is boney. I’ve just given her a whole smorgasbord of different things to try to eat, including things she has previously refused. I’ve weighed everything on a kitchen scale so I can confirm if she’s eaten at least a gram of any one thing.

Day 17

She hasn’t touched the canned cat food or much of anything else. I ran out of grapes for a day, but when I brought some home last night she gobbled down six of them very quickly. Today I dangled a couple of little strips of ham in front of her and she ate those, but wouldn’t take a third. I was able to weigh her today: 3 pounds. 

I gave her an Epsom salt bath today which she seemed to really enjoy. The water was so dirty at first that I actually changed the water while she was still sitting in the tub. Amazingly Bong let me use a wet cotton ball to clean off the crusty bits of dried blood stuck to her feathers around her face from pecking at her scabs. The feathers under her chin seem to be kind of gummed together and she let me work those out.

I’ve created a new space for her in the sunroom and will probably move her there tomorrow. I think she could do with some daylight and I’m hoping she’ll find the odd insect.

Day 19

Bong’s been eating grapes daily for almost two weeks. It was just one day that I ran out of them and I was just surprised to see her eat so many all at once. Since then she’s had grapes available.

Day 25 

The canned fish dog food was a hit with her. She has already eaten two tablespoonfuls this morning. That’s the first thing she has shown any interest in other than pellets, scratch, grapes and iceberg lettuce.

I moved her from the shower stall in the bathroom to a plastic dog crate in the sunroom on Monday. She has gained half a pound since I started weighing her a week ago. By Thursday, she started venturing out into the room from the dog crate I had her in, which was great because I was able to move her food out of the crate. By yesterday, it was clear that she was staying out of the crate the entire day, except for when she returned to the crate to go to bed. When I went down this morning, she was at the door of the crate, waiting to get out into the room and the sunshine.

The wound is looking much better and I think I’m going to be able to reintroduce her to the flock in a few days. To start, I’ll keep her in the fenced off nursery on the side of the run.

Bong hops up on my arm now when I need to pick her up. I have to transfer her to a branch to get her off my arm. She doesn’t like just being put back on the tiles.

Day 26

I added some straw and she seems to like hanging out there. Yesterday she ended up eating four whole tablespoons of the fish dog food. She probably would’ve eaten more, but I was afraid of too much too soon upsetting her digestive system, which I think it did because her poop was very different today. I gave her some more fish dog food this morning and she’s eaten about half of it.

Day 28

She has hit a lot of milestones this week and is doing very well.

On day 26, I cleaned out the nursery and the next day, which was warm and sunny, I put her outside to see how it would go. The other hens were, of course, amazed to see her reappear.

Day 32

Bong has been out in the nursery every day. I was having trouble with the dog terrorizing her so I had to work out a system where she had to come back inside when the dogs were out which was really disruptive for her. She disliked being taken her away from the flock. We put some panels up so that the nursery was hidden from the dogs’ view and now she can be out there all day and I just bring her back into the house at night. She’s perfectly happy with that since by then all the other hens have gone in to roost.

For the first couple of weeks after the attack on Bong, Basco was very worked up around the chicken coop, but then she did settle down and ignored them again until she saw Bong in the nursery. Hopefully she won’t recognize her once she’s in with the rest of the flock.  Basco probably doesn’t recognize her as the chicken she attacked but just as a new chicken that’s separate from the others.

It was really cool on day 26; after I finished inspecting her wound and giving her a “pedicure” (scaly leg mite treatment), I just let her lay in my lap until she felt like getting up. I was sitting cross legged on the floor and eventually she got up and walked up my calf to standing on my knee and then she flew across the room. It was only about 5’  but that’s where she had to land or she would’ve hit the window. It was quite a surprise and amazing to see her fly. On day 30, a big chunk of scab came off.

I first weighed her on day 18 at 3.0 lbs (1361 g). A week later, she was up to 4.0 lbs (1822 g). She has started laying eggs again: one two days ago and another this morning.

Week 5

Bong is doing beautifully, is out in the nursery 24/7 and laying an egg almost every day. I was out checking her wound for the first time in a week and the improvement has been phenomenal.

Week 6

She has so many feathers now it’s getting harder to move them back to take a photo. Now that she’s not in the house and we’re not interacting several times a day she’s less interested in having anything to do with me.

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Thanks to Sherry Begg for sharing her notes and photos, used with permission. And big thanks for her diligent care to bring Bong back to health.