If you have been watching my recent Instagram farm stories, you have become very familiar with what is going on with my Call duck Sebastian. Unfortunately, he developed a prolapsed phallus which led to its amputation. Wait, what the what?! Okay, let me break it down for you so you can better follow along. The purpose of this blog post is to simply educate you in case this happens to your duck. I hope it does NOT happen but in case it does you will be ready. Warning: Graphic photos below.
What is a Prolapsed Phallus?
First, let me give you some definitions so you can understand what this all means. A prolapsed phallus can sometimes occur in male ducks (drakes), where they are unable to retract their male genitalia (phallus) back inside of their body. It requires immediate attention to avoid complications such as secondary bacterial contamination and irreversible damage (resource: Duck DVM). From what I have learned, it is pretty common in ducks. Sometimes it can be an easy fix but other times it requires a full amputation.
How Did You Know?
This has been the #1 question about his diagnosis, how in the world did I figure out what was going on? Well, it did not take much for me to solve this case. I was bathing my ducks and thought he had some thick poop stuck to his backside. When I realized it was not coming off I flipped him over to investigate. That’s when I noticed that something did NOT look right. The photo above is exactly what I saw when I flopped him over. I could see that what I thought was poop was dead tissue. Once I had an idea of what was going on, I confirmed via Google. Unfortunately, there was not too much information and education on the internet so I quickly made a vet appointment to see if my diagnosis was correct.
Vet Appointments and Procedures
As mentioned, the next step was to take Sebastian to our vet. He confirmed my diagnosis and said he would need to remove the dead tissue and add staples to keep the phallus from prolapsing again. Sebastian was scheduled to go into surgery the next day where our vet would give him a little gas and then numb his phallus before removing the dead tissue. Sadly, he prolapsed almost immediately after coming home. It took less than a week for him to get more dead tissue on the phallus despite my best efforts to keep his crate clean. He was also given antibiotics which kept his phallus from getting further infected. The second time he went into surgery our vet added stitches to hopefully keep the phallus from prolapsing again. He had a scheduled a follow-up in 2 weeks to get the stitches removed. A few days before his follow up he prolapsed again. At this point, my vet said there must be some nerve damage so amputation would be necessary. Poor buddy headed back for a THIRD surgery.
Post Surgery Care
After Sebastian had his third and final surgery, he came home to focus on healing. I kept him in his own, clean space inside our basement. I gave him fresh water daily and gave him a diet a little higher in protein. I did this by adding some of our game bird feed to his usual duck feed. After 5 days I integrated him back to his flock. So far he is healing well and was immediately accepted back by his fellow ducks.
Prevention
After speaking to my vet, there is nothing I could have done differently to prevent this from happening. I had the appropriate amount of male: female ratio which is one drake for two females. I also keep their coop clean and changed their water daily. Sometimes more than once per day. I believe this happened because Sebastian was a little too ambitious with how much he was mating the girls. This eventually caused nerve damage which led to the amputation. On the bright side, Sebastian can continue to live a healthy, full life post-amputation. He obviously will not be able to make little ducklings next season but I am just thankful he survived.
I hope you find this post helpful. If you have any specific questions please feel free to leave a comment or shoot me an email.
Xo,
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