A Busy Week
Well this has been a busy week. First my dog Kia developed an aural hematoma–which is a blood filled sac in the ear caused by a broken blood vessel. The usual scenario is that the ear is infected or has mites and the dog shakes his head flapping the ears back and forth until a blood vessel breaks. Or the frequent scratching of the affected ear causes a blood vessel to break and it quickly fills up with blood between the skin and the cartilage of the ear. The condition on its own is pretty self limiting. After a while the blood vessel stops bleeding and the ear, if left alone will contract, along with the blood clot causing what is commonly known as a cauliflower ear.
Preventing the deformity is pretty easy in that the ear is lanced and a pressure bandage is applied until the ear is allowed to heal from the inside out. But of course, nothing is easy with Kia. As soon as the general anesthesia wore off she was trying to get the bandages off. We put one of those funny looking Elizabethan collars on her which lasted literally 5 minutes. She panicked, ran down the hallway into the bedroom and got it stuck in a door frame. By the time she got to the bedroom it was ripped in half. (By the way it was a pretty nice one and was only about $20 from the pet shop in Flat Rock on Telegraph road)
So in order to prevent further trauma, we had to keep her lightly tranquilized for a few days until the bandages came off. Once they were off, and the ear was free to flap at will, she settled down and forgot all about her ear problems.
Then just yesterday, I noticed my favorite hen had a bleeding area under her tail. This is a hen I have nursed through two different bouts of pneumonia so she is pretty tame. I caught her up only to find that she has been pecked by the other chickens until her bottom was bloody and torn. I immediately put her in isolation and fed her her favorite food–cantaloupe, hoping that she would survive the blood loss. She did! But we are not out of the woods yet. Keep your fingers crossed as she is old, but a real survivor. I will keep you posted on her progress (hopefully).