Treating an infection in duck leg- graphic pics

lonnyandrinda

Crowing
7 Years
May 11, 2012
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Coweta, OK
I thought this might prove useful to someone else so I thought I'd compile this here- and I'm always open to suggestions for care.

This is a roughly 10 month old chocolate muscovy hen. I noticed about a week ago that she was limping and staying near the guinea pen instead of down at the pond with the ducks. After two or three days she was still limping so I caught her for a better look. Yikes poor girl!










The mass was VERY hard- could not even poke it with an 18 gauge needle. It was about the size of a golf ball, maybe a little smaller. It was loose in the skin, i.e. not attached to the bone. After soaking, plucking the area, and evaluating, I decided the mass needed to be removed for her leg to heal if that was even possible. So I started with a fresh scalpel slicing away the mass. At first it was more like flaking away a little at a time, but as I got to the center it was easier- more like cutting very firm cheese. It was red and yellow marbled, with no bleeding at all. Got it to this point and started talking to friends about it. I also did 3 days of penicillin injections.




One friend suggested trying a drawing salve with icthammol in it. I happened to have some Prid onhand so I cut away as much of the mass as I could until I started drawing blood, then I slathered it on and bandaged it. At this point (Sunday night) we had a huge snowstorm move through and I left her in a sheltered cage with regular checks for food and water. Today (Wednesday) I finally had a chance to let her splash in the bath and soak her bandage, then I opened it up to see where we were at. WOW I am impressed.
You can see the top half of the wound still has the thick cheesy yellow cap, but the bottom half was gooey and soft. It pulled out like a plug to reveal some clotted blood and fresh skin. Her limping was also much reduced today.






In this last pic you can see I cut away a little more of the yellow gunk. Then I repacked the whole wound with Prid again. I am also doing another course of penicillin shots beginning today. I am very impressed at how well it is healing considering I did not really know what the wound was from or how to treat it. She will probably have a scar and maybe a lump permanently but I think she's going to make a full recovery.

My best guess is she scraped her leg on something and it got infected, similar to bumblefoot.
 
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That's a gnarly wound indeed. Instead of Ichthammol though I'd suggest Stockholm tar, pure and unadulterated, not diluted either. I've seen it work against gangrene and other extreme cases whereas I haven't seen Ichthammol do anything like that. If not for this case maybe get it for a future case, just a suggestion. It''s a very powerful disinfectant and also a great painkiller, very effective (I know for sure, not just going by animals' reactions in making that statement, because I've used it on myself too, lol). Also great at providing healing without scars.

Hope she makes a full recovery. To me this looks like maybe a spider or snake bite.

Best wishes.
 
That's a gnarly wound indeed. Instead of Ichthammol though I'd suggest Stockholm tar, pure and unadulterated, not diluted either. I've seen it work against gangrene and other extreme cases whereas I haven't seen Ichthammol do anything like that. If not for this case maybe get it for a future case, just a suggestion. It''s a very powerful disinfectant and also a great painkiller, very effective (I know for sure, not just going by animals' reactions in making that statement, because I've used it on myself too, lol). Also great at providing healing without scars.

Hope she makes a full recovery. To me this looks like maybe a spider or snake bite.

Best wishes.
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I will order some to have onhand. It's been pretty cold here for snakes to be active but it is a possibility, we've had a few warm days. Thanks for the tip!
 
You may also want to mention this on the Duck Forum - hope she mends well and quickly. Ducks can hide illness and injury very well.

Did I miss it, are you also going to give oral antibiotics? That had probably been there a little while, I would be concerned about systemic infection.

Some of the topical treatments I have seen for a number of different injuries include Manuka honey, saline solution rinses, triple antibiotic cream without painkiller, and Vetericyn.
 
You may also want to mention this on the Duck Forum - hope she mends well and quickly. Ducks can hide illness and injury very well.

Did I miss it, are you also going to give oral antibiotics? That had probably been there a little while, I would be concerned about systemic infection.

Some of the topical treatments I have seen for a number of different injuries include Manuka honey, saline solution rinses, triple antibiotic cream without painkiller, and Vetericyn.

I did not consider oral antibiotics. The first round of Penicillin was last week, Thurs, Fri and Sat. 1 cc Pen G IM in the breast. Started a second round yesterday (Wednesday) as the wound is improving. Do you think oral antibiotics would be helpful at this point? Which one would I use? I have most of the general ones on hand.

Right now I'm just doing epsom salt bath/soak daily and then packing with the Prid drawing salve. I do have my own fresh honey (well last season anyway) I could pack the wound with... I'm going to give the Prid another day or two to get the other yellow cap off, then once the caps are off I think honey would be a good next step.
 

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