Emergency treatment for chickens suffering flystrike

A few weeks ago, one of our chickens showed signs of flystrike. This was our first firsthand experience with it.

What’s flystrike? Flystrike is a condition that any animal—or human—experiences when a fly lays its eggs on a host, then the eggs hatch, and the larvae start eating the host alive. Yes, this means maggots. Maggots start eating the host alive. Maggots!

What causes flystrike? Conditions that flies love: wet and dirty. The flies probably targeted our chicken, Ginger, because she doesn’t preen and clean herself as often as the other girls, so she had prime “real estate” for flies on her bottom.

North Carolina, like many places, has experienced abnormal weather. In the piedmont area of North Carolina, we’re used to getting more than 50” of rain annually. However, in early July, we received deluges of rain in short periods of time, and severe storms. Our chicken coop and run, which has always been dry for about a decade, suddenly had a stream of stormwater runoff flowing straight through it. Their run was a sloppy and stinky mess of poo mud. I could smell the coop as soon as I opened the back door, and the coop is 50’ away. My boots sank 4” into the muck when I walked through it. I thought that was horrifying, until a few days later.

I had talked with my husband, Mike, about the problem, but we were getting ready to go out of town to visit friends. We planned to fix the moisture situation once we got back. Ginger started to act odd, but she’s one of our older girls and as these girls age, they sometimes act distant before they pass. The day before we planned to leave, Ginger was still strange. She stood with her head down and her eyes closing slowly (typically a sign of pain) while the rest of the girls ran away from the stinky coop and free-ranged in the summer grasses. I looked Ginger over again to see if she was hurt. Bumblefoot is a common affliction that chickens get—one that we’ve never experienced—and I thought maybe she had that. Instead, when I turned her upside down to check her feet, I saw a 3” circle of blood and maggots swirling on her bottom. THAT was horrifying.

Ginger is a Rhode Island Red hen and one of our oldest girls. She’s from our flock year themed around the “spice girls.” (Her sisters were Pepper, Cardamom, and Cinnamon.)

I quickly searched for the treatments for flystrike. I had heard about the nightmare condition years ago and had been grateful at the time that I had never experienced it. I learned that I needed to clear all the maggots out, spray her daily with an antibacterial spray, and keep her isolated—potentially for 4 to 6 weeks. My husband wasn’t home from work yet and the feed store, which should have the spray, was closing in 20 minutes. I called him and he was able to get to the feed store before they closed. When he told them what he was looking for—they didn’t believe him. They thought that I was mistaking maggots for mites. They have never had anyone come in with flystrike on a chicken! We’re pioneers.

Ginger got four baths that evening. That’s how many it took until I didn’t see any more maggots. I bathed her in a warm Epsom salt bath to help kill the maggots as they fell off, and to help reduce her swelling. On the side, I prepped a bowl with warm Epsom salt water. We keep liquid syringes in our critter first aid kit. Those are usually helpful when administering water or electrolyte solutions to sick animals that don’t have an appetite. This was the first time I used them to flush a wound. Once she was maggot-free, I spent time flushing her wound with the saline solution – probably about 3 cups’ worth. Then I towel-dried her and set her up in “chicken hospital”, which is a dog crate in our basement. Since she didn’t have much of an appetite, I fed her blueberries, which helped her stay hydrated. Once she was settled and fairly dry, I started the antibacterial spray, Vetericyn, 4 times per day. However, we were leaving town, so our petsitter visited and sprayed her once per day until we got home.

While I bathed Ginger, Mike ran to Lowe’s and picked up landscaping stones. To help divert future rainfall, he dug two trenches, added the stones, and piled up berms in other places. With the summer heat, he was literally soaked to the bone in sweat. It looked as if someone had just turned a hose on him. He did all of that before sunset! It’s a temporary solution until winter when we have more time and the heat isn’t as oppressive. Last winter I had already started gathering stones from around the property to make a new retaining by the coop, so this is a good Band-Aid until then. Whenever I clean the coop, I always add a layer of diatomaceous earth to the nest boxes and the run. I’ve been doing this weekly now, as a precaution, and the run has remained dry after Mike’s stone fix.

We didn’t think Ginger was going to make it and expected to come home from our weekend trip to find her passed away. However, when we got home 4 days later, she had her appetite back and drank a lot of water. I even let her free range by herself. She fell into this new routine each afternoon and, after a few days, started to tap the basement door after her free time asking me to let her back into her “coop”—the basement! I gave her another bath to make sure the wound was healing over well, then on her next free-range day I let all the girls out together. When it got close to sunset, Ginger went back to her flock for the night. Instead of 4 to 6 weeks, Ginger was ready to go back in just 8 days!

Free range time cheered her up.

She’s been settling back into her old ways: bullying the younger hens and reminding them of the pecking order. Stealing treats from them. Taking the best dust bath spots. Now the only strike the girls need to worry about is GingerStrike.

Ginger snagged Cardamom’s dust bath.