Rooster foot/leg red/raw

I posted a month or so about my poor Cochin rooster's legs. Feathers started coming out slowly.... in the late spring. More pink skin showed up over time. He seemed perfectly fine during all of this. Recently, it's just really continued to look like it's not healing at all. I have been putting Vaseline on it twice a day, which has anti inflammatory properties. I separate him from the girls at night now and have for a couple weeks, thinking the girls were pecking at the red skin. I really dont notice the hens pecking his feet during the day. Once in a great while...but not much. I have emails and photos in to 3 different vets. Waiting for responses. I have only seen one similar situation and it was posted on this forum. In that case, it was hens pecking.. She separated them and all healed up. I dont think that can be the case here...

Has anyone seen similar? I am posting a pic from the spring so you can see the big change. Also, he is black now due to the vaseline making the dirt stick. I actually brought him in and gave him a bath in the kitchen sink a week ago. It did NO good... He will not clean up until he gets new feathers in. I posted a pic in my original post a few weeks ago. I will see if i can find it to compare.

well I certainly made it all look worse with the vaseline...I can see that. Here are the pics from two weeks ago when it really got bad.... you can see the feather holes. Now there is growth coming out of those holes...

As I look at all the pics, and see the new hair growth. I'm thinking the cause of the start is a mystery but maybe once the skin was red, the hens pecked out the feathers....then I started putting the vaseline on, hair is starting to return slowly (Cochins are unbelievably slow feather producers) and now the skin is not quite as red.... He just looks SO horrible so dirty... I have no choice but to keep coating him because otherwise it looks like he'll bleed a bit.

The cases like this that I have seen posted here typically involve mostly roosters and feathered legs. If you can get some prednisone or other anti-inflammatory steroids , such as injectable solu-medrol at a vet's office, I would go that route. It could be an allergic reaction to something in his environment or feed. If you try writing some of the veterinary colleges such as Cornell and others, they might be able to help. Keep updating this post regularly, and maybe someone will have seen this and can offer an answer.

Hmmmm...I switched food from Pen Pals (or is it Pet Pals) to Purina... well wait...I started with Purina for about 8 months...then I switched to our local feedmill's Pen Pals or Pet Pals... one bag...and now back on Purina. Maybe it was that food!!! I'll see what the vets suggest and see if they will send me something. Thank you....

It is Pen Pal's by Alliance...

I bet that is it!!!!! I switched to Pen Pal's and also the feed mill's own mix. The timing would have been right.....

I am just updating this for anyone interested... or if anyone has had similar thing happen. It has been a long summer with me having to wrap my roosters legs for weeks. I'm so lucky he's a gentle boy. So now the legs have great feathering coming back in, finally, but he has the same issue effecting the back of his head /neck altho to a much lesser degree. You can see the red thru the feathers on the pic. I have treated with Sevin, assuming this is a shaft mite. Two of my hens had the problems start on their legs, but the Sevin nipped it in the bud. At least no further damage...thank God. I think they are all going to be fine now but I wish I knew what had started it all. The skin on his legs is gradually turning from bright red, back to beige...and scaley. Here is a lineup of the pics from start to today...over several months. I did show several vets and they had no idea what it might be. I started out coating his legs with vaseline but they collected sooo much dirt, and his body was turning black from it. So I decided to start wrapping and did that for weeks.










and now here he is today......







here you can see the red underneath...where he seems to be having same issue. All shafts broken... around the neck on that same area.. I did treat with Sevin again.

His legs look so much improved. Sorry that his neck feathers are getting thin, but my RIR rooster's neck feather get thin there during a molt or if the hens pull them out while on the roost. Hopefully, it is not the same problem as his legs. Thank you for the update.