crazychicknlady | Tub Goose Update.

She is growing back some skin and feathers around the edges of her injury. She started picking off scabs yesterday, but I think the freshly exposed layer looks ok. The bits she tore off kind of looked like cooked skin, possibly from the alcohol I had to pour on her when we were struggling with the maggot infestation on her first night of extreme treatment. She's gone from barely moving, to drinking water, to eating grass, to eating grass and her pellet food, to using her water to give herself a bath, to demanding extra grass treats from me whenever she hears a door, and to yelling at the other geese whenever she hears them outside. Best indicator of her improvement to date - yesterday she layed an egg.

The only reason to keep her inside now, is to keep the flies away from her. I'll go into more details about the first night of treatment below, but if maggots is not a topic you want to spend a lot of time with, you might want to stop reading now.

You have been warned.

I yelled "maggot infested goose" a bunch of times the first night we brought the goose inside, and for the few days following.

When she had been injured a couple days before by Arrow, I rinsed her off, treated her, and released her back to the other geese. At first she seemed ok, but after a couple of days she started acting unconcerned about where she was resting, whether I got near her, or even if I moved her. I figured she wasn't doing well and might not make it, so gave C the chance to say goodbye. He sat with her in the yard for a while, then asked if I could bathe her, since she smelled really bad. That led to the discovery of the maggots. They were packed in so thick, at first I couldn't tell that they weren't just part of her flesh. H was a rockstar and held her still while I worked at getting the maggots out of her. There were so many, and she bled a lot from where I pulled them off. I'd never experienced anything like that before. M got me the alcohol to try to help kill any stragglers, and hopefully knock out any infection. We brought her to live in the bath, since we didn't figure she'd survive if we left her outside (I wasn't really convinced she'd survive anyway, and for the next two days I fully expexted to find a dead goose in the bath whenever I went in to check on her). Once inside, I spent another hour, with the better light from the bathroom, cleaning more maggots off of her. It took about three days to be able to declare her maggot free (two days in, some eggs must have hatched, so I had to break out the alcohol again). I doused her injuries with vinigar regularly for about a week. Once she started eating again, I figured she was on the mend. Unfortunately, her injuries were severe enough, that they are taking a long time to heal. Until they are better enough that I don't have to worry about flies, she's going to be our grumpy, loud, house guest.