Bumblefoot

gruffy said:

I did this with my rooster, he had a scab that indicated bumblefoot and the pad of his foot swelled up quite a bit. I hold him regularly so it couldn't have been too long. anyways when I prepared to take the thing out I noticed nothing was underneath the scab. The typical video showed as soon as you pulled the scab out there was something underneath that could just be popped like a pimple and squeezed out or just kinda attached to the scab when it was pulled but I found nothing underneath the scab but pink flesh of his foot. I learned there is a scab form of bumblefoot, there's also the stringy kind where you open the foot and see a bunch of infected white strings and the kernel kind where there is a pimple kind of kernel inside their foot right under the scab. The scab form you can scrape off the scab on the bottom of their foot until you see the fleshy pink part of their foot underneath, the scab would be essentially the infection and taking it out would "cure" them. Since I took the scab out his foot had to be wrapped every day to keep it from becoming infected again. The swelling is completely gone and his foot looks normal but the scab is still there and he still has to be wrapped and kept clean. I'm with you on wondering when it will go away but all the signs of bumblefoot are gone other than the scab. The scab did turn colors again so I'm wondering if I should pick it off.

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Im new to ducks and one came with what I have recently discovered as bumblefoot. I soaked her foot in epsom and pulled the scab off but underneath ks pink health skin, not any kind of pus/kernel material? is that what you are talking about?

I would try the Tricide Neo powder you can get it online from a Koi fish place. It really works! You only have to soak the foot for 5 min. a day and in about 5 days it will be gone, at least that was our experience.

Make sure to mix it with distilled water and you are good to go. No bandaging or anything. We just pulled our hen off the roost at night, soaked the foot and put her back on the roost.

Hi all- I went from bumblefoot virgin to bumblefoot veteran last summer. My 4 girls all got it (as it turned out it was from jumping off a high perch onto gravel in their coop). I would advise the following...

catch your girl & wrap in a towel. This seems to calm them down. They almost go into a coma state when in pain apparently which works in our favour. I soaked their feet in warm water & Epsom salts for 10 mins, then used a clean razor blade or Stanley knife blade to lift off the scab. Do this with the towel over her head / body & lay her on her side so you can get to the foot pads. If you have someone to help all the better.

Once the scab is off give it a squeeze- you'll soon see if there's more to dig out or if the skin under it is pink & healthy in which case leave it. I cut out the 'bumble' as best I could where necessary (tweezers are helpful) then packed the wound with antibacterial cream. I then put a tiny square of gauze on the wound & dressed their feet using vet wrap. I repeated this twice a week for about 5 weeks until the scabs came off with pink skin underneath.

They're all good as gold now. It is stressful for them and you but one of those things you have to be ready for if you keep chickens I think. Catch it early & don't separate them -it just adds to the stress.

There are loads of good videos on you tube showing the surgery & how to wrap up their feet. I thought I'd be squeamish but the desire for my girls to be well overcame that once I got started. Good luck everyone!

Hello, I have a bit of a chicken mystery. I work at a farm and noticed that their rooster had bumble foot. The owners of the farm told me I could own the rooster if I managed to heal him. The rooster is now in my basement and has gone though two bumble foot surgeries as of now. I am considering doing a third surgery, but his foot has already become less swollen and the scab had progressively become smaller. However, his leg scales remain raised and the rest of the leg continues to be agitated. I thought this could perhaps be a sign of mites, however no other chickens from this farm have leg mites. Lastly, the toe on the back of the foot seems swollen and inflamed but does not have a scab and appears to be missing the talon. If anyone could offer suggestions on treatment or diagnoses it would be greatly appreciated!

Here is the leg with raised scales.

Here is the bumble foot scab and the toe.

Here is the leg once again.

WolfKeeper9584 said:

Hello, I have a bit of a chicken mystery. I work at a farm and noticed that their rooster had bumble foot. The owners of the farm told me I could own the rooster if I managed to heal him. The rooster is now in my basement and has gone though two bumble foot surgeries as of now. I am considering doing a third surgery, but his foot has already become less swollen and the scab had progressively become smaller. However, his leg scales remain raised and the rest of the leg continues to be agitated. I thought this could perhaps be a sign of mites, however no other chickens from this farm have leg mites. Lastly, the toe on the back of the foot seems swollen and inflamed but does not have a scab and appears to be missing the talon. If anyone could offer suggestions on treatment or diagnoses it would be greatly appreciated!

Here is the leg with raised scales.

Here is the bumble foot scab and the toe.

Here is the leg once again.

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Definitely looks like mites which can be hard to spot. I have 65 birds and only 1 that had mites and/fleas and his legs were worse than this. He actually got a staph infection (which is bumblefoot) but in his ear....I believe mites left untreated will lower the immune system and lead to staph which is everywhere. My guy simply did not take dust baths for some reason so he had mites. I used Vaseline which barely did anything, castor oil which helped a bit but ultimately ended up treating the staph infection with polysporin and keeping it clean while having him on tetracycline for a few days. Them because I realized this whole problem was a mite or flea infestation I got the big guns out and gave him the recommendation of selemectin (Revolution...I am in Canada and we don't have Frontline but it's very similar). Took care of his feet, the mites and no recurring staph. I felt horrible I never figured it out sooner and he went nearly 2 years battling mites. He's a totally different rooster now and happy! !!
Can you get him a flea or tick med that is given to your dog or cat? Ivermectin treats mites but not fleas or lice. This guy had both mites were black and fleas were yellowish pink. If you check out the forums there are lots of people using Frontline in the USA. It's better for when you only have 1 bird affected nd much easier to administer.

When they have bumblefoot and the let looks like that the infection could have gone into the leg. I know because Monday we had to put one of our beloved hens, Forest, down because a bumblefoot that I treated twice got so infected that it moved into her toes then up her leg. We took her to the vet last Friday and got pain meds and antibotics and when I changed the dressings on Sunday things looked semi ok, on Monday one of the toes looked dead. I called the vet again and we were going to have her toe amputated but after she looked at her it seemed the infection was so bad we had no choice but to put her to sleep. It was so hard What made it so hard is 32 days ago we lost a dog we had 13.5 yrs. It has been a very rough month.

Make sure when you do anything with their feet / bumblefoot EVERYTHING is sterile. I don't know where the infection came from but I've been kicking myself and feeling like I caused it.

Poultry
Northern fowl mites, Lice

Sprayer

1 pt to 25 gals water (3 tbsp/2.5 gals)
OR
1 qt to 50 gals water (6 tbsp/5 gals)

1 gal of coarse spray per 100 birds, paying particular attention to vent area.

IDEAS? I have a free range hen with a large lump above her toes that has gotten bigger over the last couple of weeks. I soaked foot in epsom salt for 15 minute, found scab area, cut small plug out with scalpel. there was no plug, pus or anything that came out, lump seems very hard, i cut a little into it....minor bleeding...it all was hard and white...not necrotic looking...like a very firm water chestnut. There were two smaller lumps with scabs that I pulled off with tweezers...same white hard flesh. i disinfected and bandaged up and have her in a kennel by herself....what's the next step? the lump is very spherical about the size of a small pecan.

Thank you all for the suggestions, we treated our rooster with Frontline and are praying for a speedy recovery. We also removed scabs off one of our hens for what seems to be the last time. Wish us luck I will let you all know what happens.

tomsale said:

IDEAS? I have a free range hen with a large lump above her toes that has gotten bigger over the last couple of weeks. I soaked foot in epsom salt for 15 minute, found scab area, cut small plug out with scalpel. there was no plug, pus or anything that came out, lump seems very hard, i cut a little into it....minor bleeding...it all was hard and white...not necrotic looking...like a very firm water chestnut. There were two smaller lumps with scabs that I pulled off with tweezers...same white hard flesh. i disinfected and bandaged up and have her in a kennel by herself....what's the next step? the lump is very spherical about the size of a small pecan.

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Our rooster and hen had very same scabs when we first removed them. We simply removed them and cleaned the wound before spraying the affected area with Vetericyn and wrapping it. We also had no pus, just the white flesh which I assume is clotted or dried puss. After a couple more removals we tried putting hydrogen peroxide on our rooster and that seemed to kill the infection pretty well. You may have to remove the scab multiple times like us, it seemed to keep growing back till we used the peroxide. So I would recommend using Vetericyn and hydrogen peroxide, wrapping the foot in gauze and making sure she is soaked frequently in Epsom salt. Also, I tried to keep as little waste as possible out of the pen so that it did not build up on the infected area. Hope this helps and good luck with your bumblefoot adventures!