Did you know that chickens can get frostbite? I didn’t know in the beginning of our chicken keeping journey either! In fact I had never thought about it until our rooster, Henry, had gotten it.

Chickens sometimes get frostbite on the very tips of their combs. It’s usually not something to worry about if it’s a small part of the comb. Henry had frostbite almost on a quarter of his comb and I was concerned.

We battled with Henry’s frostbite last year and he has it again this year. None of our other chickens have gotten frostbite like this.

Several months before Henry’s frostbite, our other rooster, Little Roo, had gotten attacked by a fox. To help Little Roo, I did a search on how I could help him and found a wonderful product called Vetericyn plus.

Vetericyn is a spray for wounds, cuts, and frostbite. It’s great to use on any wounds that your chickens have sustained. There are no antibiotics and it’s non-toxic. We spray this on our chickens’ wounds several times a day when they get hurt. It has helped our chickens out in their recovery.

If a chicken’s comb or wattle has a large amount of frostbite and it’s left untreated then it can swell, become infected, etc. It’s not good! Better to catch things like this early so it can be treated.

For Henry’s frostbite, we only spray him once a day at night. Since he’s not ill and we have the frostbite under control, we allow him to stay outside in the coop. During the day he free ranges with the other chickens and then goes back into the coop at night. It’s hard to catch him to spray on the Vetericyn so that’s why we wait until it’s time to go up for the night.

We spray both sides of his comb then allow him to go into the coop. Be sure to use the spray and not the stream. The spray will get more of the comb than the stream. I like to cover his eye with one hand and spray with the other. Even though Vetericyn is non-toxic, I don’t like to spray it into his eye. I don’t think anyone would like to have something sprayed in their eye.

Check out our video below of spraying Henry’s comb!