A flock with bumblefoot: Journey back to health

[aart]

Wow, talk about trial by fire!

I think you've done a great job in treating and documenting it here will help many keepers face this problem, thanks to the OP for that.

Lots of good info from some of the contributors to this thread, especially the product/equipment links.

 

[iwiw60]

Day 46 Treatment Update (Wednesday)

We have been having just a miserable week weather-wise. Cold, dank, steady rain, in the low 40s during the day and overnight. Tomorrow a nor'easter is supposed to blow through, but thankfully temps will stay in the 40s so it will be rain, not inches of snow. But the feet were looking a bit soggy, and it's been hard to time things right to make the bandage change worthwhile. In the midst of the rain tonight, I opted to change bandages so they'd go to bed clean and dry. I'll reassess how bad things are tomorrow and may just change them again, since I imagine they'll be pretty waterlogged after enduring inches of rain!

Anyway, things were pretty good overall!

1. Pretty Girl was, as usual, squirmy and mad, so I didn't get any pictures of her. One foot is looking almost ready to be unbandaged, the other is looking better but I think probably still has a few more days. I cleaned out both feet, sprayed down with vetericyn, and rebandaged.
2. Goldie #2 made good progress. I unbandaged one of the feet completely, and the other (the one that was worse to begin with) is still healing, so I cleaned, sprayed, and rebandaged:


3. Ro was looking great! First, 2 of the 4 blisters looked like they had made significant healing. One foot had a loose, raised scab. When that came off, it left a bit of a crater underneath, but it came off cleanly and the skin underneath was clean too. It's a little hard to see here because unfortunately the light was bad and the picture is blurry, but you can sort of make out the divot in the middle:


The other foot was ok too, still with a noticeable scab, but I think healing reasonably well- sorry for the dirt in the picture, I snapped it quickly and then scrubbed it out again so it was cleaner before I rebandaged:


I also checked the others who have had bandages off for a few days now, and everything is still looking good, no regressing.

It's amazing how much faster it is to "only" have 3 chickens with bandages to change! Dare I say I see the light at the end of the tunnel??

 

[deacons]

Day 54 Update (Thursday)

OK, back with an update and foot pictures! I took at a look at Ro to make sure I didn't make a big mistake removing her bandages. With just a day of them being off, the blisters were all nearly gone, a little dry looking, but not raw or scabby. So I am going to stay confident about keeping her bandages off.

See the last blister up in the top right corner?


With a slight flick of a fingernail, it actually came right off and was just a little dry underneath:


Here's the other foot- you can still see where the outline of where the sore was, but this was mostly just dirt, not scab, so I cleaned her up and sent her on her way:


I did not catch Pretty Girl as I'm really trying not to handle her while the poor thing is so uncomfortable with her molt. Here she is in all her pathetic looking glory:


I am going to take a leap of faith and assume that her blisters will heal the same way Ro's and Robin's have, drying out quickly once unwrapped. I know that it may not go as well for her since her little body is pulled down right now with the molt. I'm hoping in a week or so, I can comfortably pick her up again and take a look to confirm she's still doing ok.

I also did a spot check of the Goldies and Robin. Everyone is still looking clear with no relapses.

Dare I say we have this thing kicked?!

 

[azygous]

This thread has been a tremendous help to me, and I thank you so much for all the time you've taken to carefully document every phase of treatment with your charming patients.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I, too, was embarrassed upon discovering several cases if bumblefoot in my flock some weeks back. It's one of those things that I noticed in passing when handling my hens, but somehow it didn't sink in that I was looking at something serious. Like many moments of enlightenment, it occurred to me as I awoke from a dead sleep in the middle of the night. It was almost like a thunderous voice from the heavens, "The Welsummers have bumblefoot, you bumblehead, and it's all your fault!"

Then, it was followed closely by the realization that their roosting perch was too high, and they were injuring their feet jumping down every morning. So next morning, I obediently took down the perch and fixed it so it is now just inches from the floor, also solving the problem with it being slightly too short for five hens to flap their wings jumping up to it.

Back to the bumblefoot, I soaked their feet in epsom salts and pulled off the scabs and kernels, but then I didn't follow up with any more treatment and the scabs returned in a few weeks. That's when I discovered your thread with the step by step descriptions of your treatment protocol, and two days ago, I rounded up the ones whose scabs had returned, and I did a proper job on all of them this time.

Today, it was bandage changing day, and I was so excited to see dramatic healing! Smooth, new, pink skin was showing where two days ago, there were bloody craters. I didn't have any Vetericyn, so I just dabbed some triple antibiotic ointment on the sores, put a non-stick bandaid over it, then wrapped the foot in vet wrap. I was skeptical they'd leave the vet wrap on, but beyond pecking at it when they initially saw it on their feet, none of them had any problems with bandaged feet, going about their business of scratching around in the dirt, and roosting like they didn't have anything on their feet at all.

I'll be keeping a close eye on their feet from now on, and thanks to you, I discovered it's not difficult at all to treat bumblefoot, and it's easiest of all to catch it when it's just a small black scab, rather than waiting until it's swollen, infected, and painful.

 

[azygous]

My flock daily scratch through wood chips overlaying the muddy clay, or unmuddy clay over these drought years here in the southern Rockies. Splinters could well have been the cause of the infected foot pads. However, among the Welsummers affected, it was only the two heaviest that had foot problems. Ditto the other case I discovered late yesterday. I expect Bumblefoot has many causes, and it presents the way it does due to the unique nature of a chicken foot. Have I mentioned how endearing I find chicken feet?

At the rate these guys are healing, the bandages can come off in just a few more days. But even after the rain and snow hits, this flock has a dry, sandy, protected run, and their feet will never touch snow or mud unless they choose to venture out when I open the run door. Almost all abhor snow.

 

[Cynthia12]

I wish it had been this simple for us. Had there been a kernel attached to the scab I would feel much better. Since it didn't have one, I am second guessing everything we are doing (or not doing)!

Love BYC - at least I do not have to muddle through it all alone and I have cute emoticons to express my chicken exasperation!

I have found white infection in one of my birds for the first time..and her foot wasn't even swollen that bad! Boy, when I did that first little cut..out it came..puss fell into the bucket like no other. I was so glad that I went ahead and worked on her, even though it didn't look that bad. I just knew that it would get worse..little did I know. :/ She did really well after it was cleaned out really well and taken care of for a week.

 

[chicksmom30]

It was suggested by "Sunflour" who is a member here at BYC that I please re post this in this section as there were a lot of people already following this subject of Bumblefoot so here you are:

Greetings again everyone and thanks for the nice welcomes I received plus the interest in helping a chicken with "Bumblefoot".

This is what I did and am continuing to do for about another week just to make sure it is all gone.
What I did for my girls was very time consuming however as I stated in my first posting if there was any other alternative to cutting a chickens foot open I was determined to try it .
Okay, I will try and describe this in as much detail as possible without making this into a novel lol.
I first discovered this bumblefoot about a month and a half ago when sitting outside watching my girls enjoying the sunshine and nice weather I noticed that my big red bird ( Delaware Rhodie ) was limping so I picked her up and started to examine her feet... her legs and feet were noticeably very warm to the touch and I saw the usual black scabby looking things on both feet... I had no idea at the time what this was, so I started researching and learned everything I could.

I decided after reading about all the various treatments people had tried including the "so called surgery" that I would try the product called
Tricide-neo that is sold as a medicine for fish that states that it " literally punches holes into bacteria, allowing antibiotics to enter and help destroy drug-resistant strains of bacteria". I ordered some from Amazon.com and then about a month later another pkg off the E-bay site as Amazon didn't have any. Apparently there seems to be a fairly high demand for this .

This works best with 2 people 1 to hold the bird while other person does wrapping/dressing etc

This is the link to video I watched on wrapping a chickens foot. Copy and paste this into your browser
I highly recommend you view this . The woman who did this video was great WATCH IT

Here is what I used :

Tri-cide neo ( 2 pkgs ) follow instructions do not use anything other than distilled H2o
Vet wrap ( yellow) this stuff is great it totally sticks to itself . I used Yellow because I didn't want to use a color like red which might cause the other chickens to peck at it... I wanted it to look as normal as possible to them.
Duct-tape
Small cotton pads
Penicillin ( injectable buy it at feed store) I did not inject the birds with it...just used the needle /syringe to get the Rx out of glass sealed bottle then took needle off and used the open part of syringe to put some on cotton pad while dressing chickens foot. Keep this refrigerated !
Vaseline

1. Prepare the Tricide neo I used a small cat litter pan ( clean-not ever used ) poured the liquid into it. Just enough to barely cover a chickens foot while they are standing. Do not let your chicken drink this! I just kept my hand gently on bird while timing the soak for about 7 min .
2. Have your partner sitting in a chair and then after soak they will lift bird up putting the bird on their lap while laying the bird on its side so you can dry and wrap the feet with medicine ( I used clean animal towels to dry feet )
3. Dry foot
4 Get a sm. cotton pad and cut in quarters ( 4 pieces) take 1 piece and put Vaseline on it very thickly this makes it stick to the foot while you are preparing to wrap it and also will keep the birds foot moist which is extremely important as you don't want the bumble to dry out in between treatments.
5 Lift cotton pad up just enough to get end of syringe ( NO NEEDLE) between pad and foot and put some Penicillin in there,
6. Take a piece of vet wrap ( Don't forget to watch the video ) and start to wrap chickens foot I have found myself that once you get the top part stuck the rest will come together and then I used extra strips that I had already pre-cut to fill in where more wrap was needed .
7. take one final strip and wrap around the chickens ankle area ( guess its called that )? and then I take 1 more small strip of duct tape and go over the last wrap at ankle to secure it.

As I said in the beginning " this is time consuming" I can't guarantee that this will work for your chickens but it definitely worked for mine
I have read many responses for people who used this on BYC and other poultry sites but feel that maybe they didn't do the treatment long enough and gave up after having to do this every day until it was gone.

I had to dedicate about an hour and a half every day to my birds...but again I didn't want to cut on them pain meds or not . I preferred a different approach. I love my birds they all have names and I don't want to do anything that would be harmful to them in any manner. Some people have opted to cut on their birds ...that is a personal decision but I believe that all creatures feel pain and who are we to decide how they feel it ? Just my opinion don't mean to offend anyone .

Also one more thing that was changed we already had round roosts in our coop for the birds ( no square which some experts say can cause a pressure or sore on foot eventually causing bumblefoot)
We also raised up the floor in our coop instead of lowering roosts... either way we just added a couple of wood pallots then covered with plywood then lots of straw ...as I am sure most of you already know that if a bird is too heavy or just even up too high when they jump down off roosts that can... over time cause a bumble also.
Good luck everyone.


Good luck with getting rid of bumblefoot .

 

[CC1892]

Hi everyone, just thought I would pop back on to this thread with an update on the girls. I just did my first spring "foot check," and everyone is still bumblefoot free. It was a long, hard winter for the girls, and they are sure enjoying being back out in the fields, scratching around in the leaves and dirt and catching those first spring bugs. I'm going to continue on with Monday night foot checks, as I am more than convinced its worth it to catch any possible bumblefoot issues sooner rather than later.

Some of the girls enjoying the first spring days:

 

[CC1892]

Hello deacons!
You went to a lot of trouble to post day to day treatment with photos.
Plus you had some great ideas when I ran out of them....
I rarely post anything but I just had to let you know your hard work was
a great help to me. I've only owned chickens for 4 years, and nearly
every week it's been a learning experience.

Thanks so much!

 

[iwiw60]

EXCELLENT!! You "done good" girlfriend!

You know, I sometimes think that improper roosting bars has something to do with bumblefoot...I don't know for sure, but it always comes to mind for me. My roost bar is a 2 x 4 laying flat that I had my BIL sand/smooth and he also routed the edges slightly so it's really smooth on their feet. I mean I know that while they're out and about during the day they can pick up a sliver of something, etc., but bad roosting bars always come to mind. Again I applaud your efforts...your girls have a great chicken mama!