Tick Bit Hen

My daughter came running in the back door with a chicken in her arms (this is nothing new) while I was cooking dinner.  Something was obviously wrong with one of our Wyandotte hens.  She didn't have a name at the time, we had 6 of them and only one was different than the others, as she had a pea comb (lumpy instead of the typical one that stands up).  Why I feel guilty about this, I just don't know, because these pretty ladies really don't like to be bothered (except for given treats). 

The poor hen's face...was not right.

Her face, mouth, and wattles were sooo swollen and dark red, and she was laboring to breathe.  Her eyes, usually almost flush with her face, were deep set and her cheeks were large.  Her wattles stood out angled, thick and hot, instead of hanging loosely like thin flaps.  They were much darker than her comb, which was completely normal.

She looked really really bad, the situation looked dire.

We wrapped her up in a towel (you know it's bad if she allows that), it just seemed to be the right thing to do, then sat her on my lap while Natalie searched online for what could possibly be wrong.  It was essentially the chicken version of the WebMD search.  You know the kind, it always points to cancer.

Fowl cholera, bacterial infection...all very bad things that mean imminent death and possibly flock destruction. 

As she's looking, and we're both starting to freak out a bit on the inside, I notice a bulgy blister on the hen's head.  Natalie looks up "blisters on chickens head" just as I realize it's a big fat tick!  We call them dog ticks here, they are gray and get very large and round (they might be called castor bean ticks elsewhere).

I pull the tick with tweezers, both of us laughing with relief, and we look up if chickens can have Benadryl (they can).  We give her some children's Benadryl (they'll eat bread dipped in anything), and before our eyes, the swelling starts going down and her color looks a little better.  She starts breathing normally, and then suddenly with a loud squawk, wants off of my lap.  We turn the impatient hen loose outside, she doesn't even look back as she joins her friends.  Natalie and I giggled with relief, thank goodness for Benadryl!

It took a good several weeks for her comb and wattles to go back to normal, but she eventually made a full recovery.  And while ticks are something chickens eat (read about that here), it's bad news when a tick turns the tables.

Ticks, it turns out, though small, are very complex creatures.  The have special ways of latching on, making them hard to remove and allowing them to stay attached for a very long time.  Their saliva has anticoagulant properties.  On a small animal like a chicken, a little goes a long way!