A warning for those raising animals | Animals | Forums

So last Sunday over breakfast with Nader, we were talking about our animals. I commented how much I enjoyed our turkeys. I really loved the tom. I told Nader he was chill and people say that tom's are mean and such. Heck even B17 said he almost had to draw his LCP on his dads tom because it was aggressive. But not our tom, I said I could just go and pick him up and walk around with him. Nader didn't believe me. So I said when I get home, I will take a picture for you and text it. So I did.

a couple weeks ago, he had a wound on his wing which we cleaned and he seemed fine

on wed, I took this pic of him chilling with the ducks, I noticed a little spot on his rear, I thought it might have just been poop

Thursday and Friday was very warm, humid and raining. Now when it rains, the birds usually hang out in the gazebo or gardens. I was busy with stuff and didn't get to spend any time with them. I noticed tom's back was dark. I thought it was just from the dustbaths and the rain.

On saturday my wife flew out to her mom's so I was stuck at work all day. Around 4 my daughter called me and said Dad, you need to come back to the house. So I went back and there was tom sitting, with his back covered in blood. WTF? So I started lifting up his back feathers and his whole back from his tail up to almost his neck was covered with maggots digging into his flesh. Oh jesus.

So we grabbed some warm water and started rinsing off the maggots and trying to pick them out. Chunks of clotted blood and flesh was falling off him. By this time the farm store had closed and I couldn't go get anything to try and help. So I did the best I could till morning and set him on the roost.

Sunday morning I woke up at 6 before anyone else and walked outside and the three hens were eating out of the feeder, I didn't see him anywhere, so I called for him and he slowly came walking out from under my dads cabin. He looked like a zombie. His back was covered with open wounds, more maggots and most of his feathers were in shambles.

He tried eating out of the feeder and the hens started attacking him, so he came up onto the porch, just looking for some bread.

If it was earlier in the season, I probably could have nursed him back to health, but we are scheduled for processing the turkeys next week and with winter coming on, there's no way he would have made it due to the loss of feathers and his feet issues.

So I did what needed to be done, I killed him.

After it was finished, I pulled his feathers apart to be able to see the true damage. His whole back was pretty much gone. I think it started with the one little spot, he pecked it, some blood flowed, flys laid their eggs which made it worse since he had maggots eating him alive, which he started pecking at more and then the other birds probably all started attacking it as well. The dark spot on his back I had thought was from the dust baths, was probably actually blood.

So due to my lack of knowledge, this bird that I loved and thought was cool as hell suffered for several days as he was being eaten and pecked alive by maggots and other birds.

it's called fly strike and can happen to all animals, this is a lamb affected by it

they make this product called swat to help deal with it

if I had known about it, I could have saved him, but due to my lack of knowledge about it, he died.

Just a heads up