8wk fawn with sudden eye/face swelling

I have a fawn whose face (under eye to jaw on left only) became incredibly swollen early this morning. I’m wondering if anyone has had problems with stings or self-inflicted kicks to the face.



The fawn is 8 weeks old, the swelling occurred in less than 10 minutes, and I can’t find any major external injuries. It doesn’t look centrally located the like lumpy jaw/bottle jaw that I’ve seen; more like evenly dispersed area swelling. I’ve checked his mouth and throat for any lesions or bumps but haven’t found any. The swelling is primarily under his eye and accompanied by a small pin prick-sized scab. I’m suspecting a bee sting, but I’m not positive.



As of now he has snacked a bit and is drinking water, but wont take a bottle and can’t swallow anything bigger than a cheerio. The swelling has decreased some, but not much and he’s not very active.



Any suggestions on how I should be treating him or previous problems with wasps or bees? I’ve read about using Benadryl but not sure of the dosage.

Give him 1.5cc banamine of and 0.5 cc of dex. (both SQ)I suspect a snake bite. Look very good around the area. I bet you find a small poisionous snake.

I was thinking the same thing Scott, we had a year and a half old doe that got whacked by a spider or snake earlier this year, we think snake. Almost lost her. We gave her 2 cc's of Draxxin, 2 cc's of B-24 (another cattle antibiotic), 2 cc's of baytril and 2000 cc's of lactating ringers. We also lanced the swelled area to relieve the pressure. She was fine in the morning. After the swelling went down we could see the bite easily.

Thank you both. We don’t have many snakes so the thought never occurred to me. The more the swelling goes down the more it does look like a bite. He seems to be feeling a bit better and I got about 12oz in him this morning. Hoping the Baytril and Banamine do the trick.

I had one have a similar issue earlier, posted it with pics. Sure you could search for it. Turned out to be an abcess (still not sure of the cause). She wasn't on bottle so not easy for me to medicate. I let nature run it's course, abcessed area lost hair, turned black, and then ruptured. It then scabbed over and healed just fine. I made sure she continued to eat fine and tried to control flies. You now wouldn't know she ever had it. Just my experience.