3 poultry operations

Chickens and ducks are popular block pets, and tricky surgical patients.

The problem

Penny had a large, heavy mass hanging off her chest. It was 8cm in diameter and weighed a whopping 350g, almost 20 percent of her 2kg bodyweight.

The mass had grown slowly over a few months. She hadn't been bothered by it until its weight made it difficult to walk. It was dragging on the ground at times, and the skin was infected. Penny was still eating, drinking, and laying normally.

The treatment

Luckily a sample of the mass revealed a lot of fat and not much else. That was a relief because if it had been a nasty cancer, we couldn't have operated and Penny would have needed to be euthanised.

Fortunately, the mass was easy to remove, revealing a massive lipoma, a benign cancer made up of fat cells.

However, it left a very large wound, with a lot of empty space between the skin and the muscle. The body's reaction to this is to fill the space with fluid. We placed two drains in Penny's wound to prevent this so that the muscle tissue could adhere to the skin.

There was also a large amount of extra skin, full of blood vessels. While the surgery was straightforward, it was slow going as each blood vessel had to be cauterised to prevent haemorrhaging. We used small, electric tweezers to close the wound, burning off the tips of the vessels to stop the bleeding.

The result

Penny was in pain when she woke up and was kept in hospital for two days, receiving strong pain relief.

By then, she was able to move easily and must have felt so much lighter. A few days later, we removed the drains.

After 14 days, her wound was healed and the stitches were removed. Her owners told us she was ecstatic to be allowed to rejoin her flock.