Hello all,
First off, thank you to the many folks who have posted helpful articles and guides in the past related to what I'm about to explain - everything from treating bumble foot to tube feeding ill ducks. Your help has been invaluable in conjunction with my local veterinarian.
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TL;DR: Duck has lost half its weight, has been tube fed for three weeks, even sustaining this weight is a challenge. Was also given a very incorrect dose of antibiotics for two weeks (10-15x stronger than was needed due to decimal place error) and I don't know if continuing to support her via tube feeding is the humane thing to do or not. Is there hope for her?
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Apologies in advance for the long read...
This is Anna Duck, she's roughly 3.5-4 years old. She used to weigh around 8lbs and now weighs 4lbs. She has had what started as bumble foot last spring. I believe, after a lot of soaking and treatment and then picking out the bit of softened kernel that was left, the foot became infected down to the bone. We tried a few rounds of antibiotics over the summer, two weeks each time, and it did not seem to do much nor soften the severely swollen toe.
Apologies, I do not have a picture of the bottom of her foot, but it sure looked like a classic case of bumble foot, with a surface "scab" about 3/8" in diameter, both vets agreed with that.
She continued to waddle around the yard, though less than her brothers and sisters, and was fairly hesitant to fully submerge in the water. She's had a very ruffled look all year, like she's failed to molt her broken/worn feathers.
She went in twice, as mentioned, in April and July. The first time she was put on Amoxicillin + Clavulanate 500mg, the second visit (to a different doctor) she was given Enrofloxican 125mg/mL suspension, I do not recall the dose nor is it marked on the paperwork (more on this later..), neither medication from either vet cleared up the infection though it did reduce the swelling slightly and her left foot not longer felt warm to the touch, and we'd considered she'd stabilized and the bone that had grown in to wall off the infection was likely permanent but had done it's job.
Fast forward to about two months ago, I went to put the ducks to bed and found her laying on her chest, legs splayed out. I carried her to the coop, plumped up a nest of straw, and moved her food bowl close to her. By the next morning she was walking around fine again.
Finally, three or four weeks ago, I went to put them to bed and picked her up, only to realize how crazy light she was. She was not this light just a month prior, though I couldn't tell you if she was what I'd consider her "heaviest" - I was immediately shocked at how pronounced the center of her chest felt, very boney and hard. Left foot warmer to the touch.
Since then, she has been living in my garage in a 5' x 5' pen with fresh straw, water, and her duck food pellets. The garage is kept heated at 55 (it's in the teens here right now) and she also has two heat lamps on one side of the enclosure so she can stay warm under them.
She went back to the vet and was given Enrofloxican 125ml/mL liquid at 2ml once a day. We were informed later that there was an error in the placing of the decimal in the instructions and that the correct dose was 0.2ml, and actually slightly less than that if you go by suggested dosing/body weight measurements. So she was on a crazy high dose for two weeks. She is now down to the 0.2ml once a day. I completely understand the decimal placing error from the vet, they've been great folks to me in the past and I absolutely understand that mistakes happen, so now we just need to work through this if possible.
During all of this, she showed an initial hesitancy to eat. She would drink, and continues to do so now, and will occasional peck at food (though less and less these days) and shows no interest in any kind of special food, like leafy greens, peas, corn, worms, anything like that. Although she did peck at a garden "salad" two days ago with some finely cut up tomatoes.
As a result, I have been tube feeding her anywhere from 20-30ml up to almost 200ml (split up into usually two or three feedings). This has been happening daily, for the most part, for the last three weeks, with a short break of about three days after we discovered the over-dose on antibiotics. She had a very swollen, bubbly crop, which seems to have likely been caused from that increased dosing probably killing off all her gut bacteria. For those three days (and continuing since, we're on day eight now) she gets a fresh bowl of water every day with save-a-chic probiotic mixed in.
Regarding the tube feeding, it initially started as a mix of finely ground duck pellets, baby formula powder (vet recommended), and baby food, usually pea or sweet potato flavor, the very puréed kind. I'd mix this all with warm water until it was thin enough to pull up into a syringe and then would insert a feeding tube 6-8" into her throat (avoiding her tracheal opening) and feed her.
Towards the end of last week, immediately prior to realizing the overdosing and when her swollen chest/crop area was most prominent, she'd regurgitate some very warm water or sometimes small amount of the food I was feeding her. I just assumed in the moment it was because she was likely full / not digesting properly (later realizing it was probably from the very upset stomach from the antibiotics).
This is her last week, enjoying a warm bath. If you zoom in you can see the still swollen middle left toe. It's the size of a hotdog in diameter, and has never shrunken. It is hard to the touch, there's little to no movement in that join any more.
This morning she weighed 1700g, her lightest yet. I am resuming the three times a day feeding, roughly 50-60ml each time, to see if we can sustain her weight. You can see she looks pretty haggard. She still drinks water (especially loves the warm bath water, which she ALSO happens to love to poop in) and will groom herself to dry off after the bath, still honks a lot when held (though this may be more because she's nervous, she was never a lap duck or super social with me!) and for the most part keeps the food down. Only in the last day have I noticed she seems to be regurgitating some amount of it either back into her water bowl or directly into her "salad" bowl. Not the full serving, but a tablespoon or two worth of it. This happens some time after feeding her, after I've gone back inside, so I couldn't say for sure if she's immediately going to the water bowl and re-upping the food or if it happens some time later.
She does still have a scab on the bottom of her foot, looking just like before, fleshy and soft like the kernel of a bumble foot infection. I just don't know if continuing to soak/scrape away at it or wrapping in in a bandage with PRID and then plucking it out with tweezers or something is the right thing to do. Surely, by now, the infection must be gone with all the antibiotics? I suspect at this point it may be too late anyways, or that it is not what the biggest problem is anymore.
I am back and forth on whether I am doing the right thing. I do not know if I am prolonging her life and causing misery or if there is chance, even if it is slim, of getting her to pull through this. I should have taken more immediate action almost a year ago when this foot infection popped up and taken better precautions to ensure the bumble foot infection didn't spread further in the first place. These are my first lot of ducks, so I am still learning a lot here, but I know I could have done better back then and am trying to make up for it now, if I even can!
So my question is pretty simple... am I prolonging the inevitable? Just this morning she was having trouble walking around (possibly from too much straw not being a very stable surface) and would trip over her bad foot like she was standing on it and not realizing, then taking a step, and tripping forward into the straw.
Any insight, suggestions, or advice are much appreciated. I would like to do what is best for her.
A few points that may be helpful:
First off, thank you to the many folks who have posted helpful articles and guides in the past related to what I'm about to explain - everything from treating bumble foot to tube feeding ill ducks. Your help has been invaluable in conjunction with my local veterinarian.
--
TL;DR: Duck has lost half its weight, has been tube fed for three weeks, even sustaining this weight is a challenge. Was also given a very incorrect dose of antibiotics for two weeks (10-15x stronger than was needed due to decimal place error) and I don't know if continuing to support her via tube feeding is the humane thing to do or not. Is there hope for her?
--
Apologies in advance for the long read...
This is Anna Duck, she's roughly 3.5-4 years old. She used to weigh around 8lbs and now weighs 4lbs. She has had what started as bumble foot last spring. I believe, after a lot of soaking and treatment and then picking out the bit of softened kernel that was left, the foot became infected down to the bone. We tried a few rounds of antibiotics over the summer, two weeks each time, and it did not seem to do much nor soften the severely swollen toe.
Apologies, I do not have a picture of the bottom of her foot, but it sure looked like a classic case of bumble foot, with a surface "scab" about 3/8" in diameter, both vets agreed with that.
She continued to waddle around the yard, though less than her brothers and sisters, and was fairly hesitant to fully submerge in the water. She's had a very ruffled look all year, like she's failed to molt her broken/worn feathers.
She went in twice, as mentioned, in April and July. The first time she was put on Amoxicillin + Clavulanate 500mg, the second visit (to a different doctor) she was given Enrofloxican 125mg/mL suspension, I do not recall the dose nor is it marked on the paperwork (more on this later..), neither medication from either vet cleared up the infection though it did reduce the swelling slightly and her left foot not longer felt warm to the touch, and we'd considered she'd stabilized and the bone that had grown in to wall off the infection was likely permanent but had done it's job.
Fast forward to about two months ago, I went to put the ducks to bed and found her laying on her chest, legs splayed out. I carried her to the coop, plumped up a nest of straw, and moved her food bowl close to her. By the next morning she was walking around fine again.
Finally, three or four weeks ago, I went to put them to bed and picked her up, only to realize how crazy light she was. She was not this light just a month prior, though I couldn't tell you if she was what I'd consider her "heaviest" - I was immediately shocked at how pronounced the center of her chest felt, very boney and hard. Left foot warmer to the touch.
Since then, she has been living in my garage in a 5' x 5' pen with fresh straw, water, and her duck food pellets. The garage is kept heated at 55 (it's in the teens here right now) and she also has two heat lamps on one side of the enclosure so she can stay warm under them.
She went back to the vet and was given Enrofloxican 125ml/mL liquid at 2ml once a day. We were informed later that there was an error in the placing of the decimal in the instructions and that the correct dose was 0.2ml, and actually slightly less than that if you go by suggested dosing/body weight measurements. So she was on a crazy high dose for two weeks. She is now down to the 0.2ml once a day. I completely understand the decimal placing error from the vet, they've been great folks to me in the past and I absolutely understand that mistakes happen, so now we just need to work through this if possible.
During all of this, she showed an initial hesitancy to eat. She would drink, and continues to do so now, and will occasional peck at food (though less and less these days) and shows no interest in any kind of special food, like leafy greens, peas, corn, worms, anything like that. Although she did peck at a garden "salad" two days ago with some finely cut up tomatoes.
As a result, I have been tube feeding her anywhere from 20-30ml up to almost 200ml (split up into usually two or three feedings). This has been happening daily, for the most part, for the last three weeks, with a short break of about three days after we discovered the over-dose on antibiotics. She had a very swollen, bubbly crop, which seems to have likely been caused from that increased dosing probably killing off all her gut bacteria. For those three days (and continuing since, we're on day eight now) she gets a fresh bowl of water every day with save-a-chic probiotic mixed in.
Regarding the tube feeding, it initially started as a mix of finely ground duck pellets, baby formula powder (vet recommended), and baby food, usually pea or sweet potato flavor, the very puréed kind. I'd mix this all with warm water until it was thin enough to pull up into a syringe and then would insert a feeding tube 6-8" into her throat (avoiding her tracheal opening) and feed her.
Towards the end of last week, immediately prior to realizing the overdosing and when her swollen chest/crop area was most prominent, she'd regurgitate some very warm water or sometimes small amount of the food I was feeding her. I just assumed in the moment it was because she was likely full / not digesting properly (later realizing it was probably from the very upset stomach from the antibiotics).
This is her last week, enjoying a warm bath. If you zoom in you can see the still swollen middle left toe. It's the size of a hotdog in diameter, and has never shrunken. It is hard to the touch, there's little to no movement in that join any more.
This morning she weighed 1700g, her lightest yet. I am resuming the three times a day feeding, roughly 50-60ml each time, to see if we can sustain her weight. You can see she looks pretty haggard. She still drinks water (especially loves the warm bath water, which she ALSO happens to love to poop in) and will groom herself to dry off after the bath, still honks a lot when held (though this may be more because she's nervous, she was never a lap duck or super social with me!) and for the most part keeps the food down. Only in the last day have I noticed she seems to be regurgitating some amount of it either back into her water bowl or directly into her "salad" bowl. Not the full serving, but a tablespoon or two worth of it. This happens some time after feeding her, after I've gone back inside, so I couldn't say for sure if she's immediately going to the water bowl and re-upping the food or if it happens some time later.
She does still have a scab on the bottom of her foot, looking just like before, fleshy and soft like the kernel of a bumble foot infection. I just don't know if continuing to soak/scrape away at it or wrapping in in a bandage with PRID and then plucking it out with tweezers or something is the right thing to do. Surely, by now, the infection must be gone with all the antibiotics? I suspect at this point it may be too late anyways, or that it is not what the biggest problem is anymore.
I am back and forth on whether I am doing the right thing. I do not know if I am prolonging her life and causing misery or if there is chance, even if it is slim, of getting her to pull through this. I should have taken more immediate action almost a year ago when this foot infection popped up and taken better precautions to ensure the bumble foot infection didn't spread further in the first place. These are my first lot of ducks, so I am still learning a lot here, but I know I could have done better back then and am trying to make up for it now, if I even can!
So my question is pretty simple... am I prolonging the inevitable? Just this morning she was having trouble walking around (possibly from too much straw not being a very stable surface) and would trip over her bad foot like she was standing on it and not realizing, then taking a step, and tripping forward into the straw.
Any insight, suggestions, or advice are much appreciated. I would like to do what is best for her.
A few points that may be helpful:
- She has never had bloodwork done, no vet has ever offered it nor did I think to ask for it.
- She has never had an x-ray done, again, no vet has ever offered it and, though I did think about it, I figured that if a vet didn't think it was needed, then it probably was not needed.
- She has not laid an egg in three or four months, and before that I was lucky if I'd get one or two a week, if that. It was only her first year with me (2023) that she was giving me eggs more regularly.
- She's had her foot wrapped in a poultice two or three times now, which did seem to help soften up the scab still present on the bottom of her foot.
- She does not appear to have any trouble breathing, though I do hear "gurgling" noises from her every 30-40 seconds after feeding time, I assume this is just normal digestion.
- She either stand or lays on her chest at night with her feet tucked up and her head tucked back with her bill under a wing. This is how she sleeps.
- She does hold herself mostly like you see in the final picture, head sort of tucked back or almost resting on her back, and kind of puffs her chest out front more than I remember her doing last year when she was healthy.
- She sounds very "creaky" when I lift her up to weight her during the day. She'll flap her wings with almost no gusto or energy, and her joints will crack/pop every now and then. I assume this is from the dramatic weight loss and lack of muscle.
- Her poops have changed multiple times. Sometimes it's very clear, thin, and watery (and smelly), other times it's a very granular/gritty green, other times it's a light brown with some grit to it, though largely what I would consider to look "normal".
- Her temp was checked once, rectally, and she seemed to be a degree or two below average according to the vet.
- Her eyes also have small tiny foamy bubbles in them, appearing and disappearing every few days, so she has Tobramycin drops put in them several times a day. Not sure if this is an eye infection or a respiratory infection.
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