Treating bumble foot in ducks:

This spring lead to a scary and exciting month of work, dedication, and a lot of love. I found that my Pekin Jeffery had a severe case of bumble foot. I should have checked my ducks’ feet often, but just skipped it because I knew they would not like me picking them up.

*ALWAYS check your ducks’ feet to make sure that they do not have bumble foot.

Shortly after finding out Jeffery had bumble foot, two of my other girls had a minor case of it, too. If you catch it early, then it’s easier to treat, but, as in Jeffrey’s case, it was caught late and was hard to treat.

In this post I will show you step by step how to treat, wrap, and how to pull a scab off the bottom of your duck’s foot.

To start off, I am going to give a little information on bumble foot. Bumble foot is a staff infection in the bottom of a duck’s foot. It will soon, if not treated, run up the leg and into the body, leading to a severe surgery or even death. It starts by the duck getting a cut on the bottom of his foot, getting bacteria into it, and then leading to a black scab on the bottom of the foot. It is hard to prevent, but to be careful, clear out any sharp sticks, rocks, and any broken pieces out of the run.

»»This is a picture of it when I had just found out Jeffery had it. It looked really bad, but now it looks way better.

Now going into the procedure part, you will need a nice set of gear to be able to do treatment. Here is a list of all of the supplies you will need:

-Iodine

-Gauze pads

-Gauze rolls

-Gloves

-Tub

-Towel

-Tweezers

-Water prof tape

-Epsom salt

-Poultry wound spray

-Neosporn

-Scissors

-Duck shoes- I got these and love them; you can find the ones I got here.

-Cotton balls




I am going to start step by step on how to treat bumble foot-

1. When you first find out your duck has bumble foot, whether it’s severe or minor, you want to fill a tub with warm water. Then you need to add iodine and Epsom salt to the water.
2. Let your duck sit in the water for about 30 minutes.
   
3. Take the duck out of the water and dry off his feet.
4. Lay the duck down, holding one foot out to the back of his body (you might need a helper).
5. Spray the duck’s foot with the wound spray.
6. Take a cotton ball and put neosporn on it.
7. Put the cotton ball up against the wound and wrap it with gauze pads and gauze rolls to hold it in place.
   
8. Take the tape and wrap it around the gauze pads (with cotton ball under it). With the tape, go up around the back toe and back to the front of the foot. Finally, slip the shoe on the foot. Make sure that it is comfortable.
   
9. Continue to the next foot doing the same thing.
10. Repeat steps 1-9 every day. After several days, you can switch to every other day instead, letting the scab dry out. To pull off the scab, just lightly tug at the end of it. If it comes off, then good. If it does not want to come off, continue soaking it every other day so that it will come off when it’s ready. If it bleeds, make sure that you have extra gauze pads on the ready.
11. When a new scab returns and it is not black then you have completed the process.
    

That should conclude how to treat bumble foot. It is a very time-consuming process, but if you love your ducks you need to take extra measures.