We have a flock of chickens - and have had lots of difficulty with raccoons (primarily) over the years. We put up an electric fence around their pen, but the raccoons still found a way around it. Now at night, we keep them in the garage. But last night, they were in their pen a bit after dark and my mom heard the blood curdling scream of an attack. She ran out and the animal (we suspect a raccoon) ran off. All of the hens ran down into the garage that night. Once they were in there, they were fine.

But this morning, one of the hens is injured. She has two pretty big puncture wounds to the right of her neck, and it seems that the eggshells and food she had eaten are coming right out of the wound there, onto the ground. She is walking around normally, not running but walking, and she was clamoring to get in the pen to get to the nest boxes, to lay an egg.

So my questions are - do animals heal from such wounds, and how do I know if she's suffering and if I should kill her? Do you think I should keep her separate? And just in general, do you have any thoughts on what I might do?

We called around and spoke to animal shelter people, and a couple of vet secretaries, and they say several things. The first is - it's a puncture wound from an unknown animal, so they have to worry about rabies and talked about quaratine or euthenasia. They also mentioned antibiotics, which I have and could give her, if I keep her separate, because I think it gets put in the water. They also said something about maybe being able to do surgery.

Any input would be great. Thanks so much.

-- Genevieve (g-maricle@nwu.edu), May 06, 2003

Answers

a puncture wound ot the neck,, with food coming out isnt a good sign. It means she she wont be able to eat, or at least not well. Also means the food is getting into the wound. Id put her down, unless she is a very special chicken, Id put her down,, dont eat her,, because of the unkown animal, rabies and such. Surgery on a chicken can be VERY expensive. To prevent further attacks,, keep them in at night,,and set out some traps. Connibear #220 works very well for coons.

-- Stan (sopal@net-pert.com), May 07, 2003.

We have had problems with skunks and raccoons also. The only thing we found to help is to bury the fencing under the ground about a foot or so so they get discouraged so they will not dig the fence out and get into the coop. We have caught 3 giant raccoons and one skunk in our have a heart trap and released them in another neighborhood. So far these chickens that we have are surviving by learning from our mistakes also we have found that if there is a dog tied outside the critters won't come around.

-- Donna (oliviadylan@aol.com), June 25, 2003.