Bumblefoot has me bumbling

[Justin0271]

I have a girl who clearly has bumblefoot (black scab, swelling, heat, and she was taking every opportunity she could to stand on one leg and take weight off the affected foot). We brought her in, bathed her, and took a scalpel and dental picks to the plug to try and get the infection out, but after it came off there was more blood than expected, and after a lot of fiddling to find anything all that came out was a bit of gooey white puss, which promptly went red with blood and disappeared into the rest of the wound. I squeezed firmly, but not hard, to try and get anything out, but there was no solid mass whatsoever. This is our first bumblefoot surgery and I'm worried we haven't cleared it all out. She's clearly unhappy inside bandaged and dressed with antiseptic, mostly I think because she's lonely. We're thinking of just letting her heal for the next week or so and seeing if what we did was enough to purge the infection. Thoughts? any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[coach723]

PIctures are always welcome. Some bumblefoot has a very confined core that will come out easily (relative). Some does not. I would let the foot rest, change the bandages, keep an eye on it and see how it does. Sometimes it can be necessary to do repeat cleanouts and treatments before it will start to heal. It's hard to predict, every bird is different, every case is different. I've had some real simple ones, and ones that were less so. Had a roo that it took over a year to get his feet to heal up, with multiple clean outs and surgeries in his feet, and sometimes it bled a lot as it was quite deep in his foot. Sometimes you have to do a fair amount of squeezing and manipulating to get it all to come out. You can sometimes feel it in there as hard spots where there shouldn't be anything hard. If it's healing it should look like a normal scab forming. If it fills back up with pus, then you will have to have another go at it.
This is normally the method I use, and I only resort to cutting if this is not effective:
https://www.tillysnest.com/2015/12/non-surgical-bumblefoot-treatment.html/?spref=pi