Hey all, I've had an interesting/distressing weekend with my flock of 9 hens, so I thought I would share and see if any of you are having the same problem. On Friday afternoon, my husband and I were out checking the run and giving snacks to the girls, and I noticed a funny swelling on my RIR's toe. We caught her and inspected, and it turns out she's managed to get bumblefoot. So we cleaned out the wound, got the kernel, applied antibiotics and wrapped her up. She's not lame, is laying fine, eating, etc, so I believe we caught it fairly early. But what confuses the heck out of me is that we do bi-weekly health checks (feet, feathers, and head) and this seemed to come out of nowhere. It was most definitely NOT there 2 weeks ago.
After we dealt with Red's toe on Friday, we inspected the rest of the girls very carefully, and none of them had anything suspicious. Sunday afternoon rolled around, and we changed Red's dressing and did another inspection of everyone. Red is looking pretty good, but NOW, 2 other hens have developed small black sores on the pads of their feet!!! One has pinhead sized sores on both feet and some swelling, and the other has a slightly larger but still small kernel, with no other sign of infection, swelling or raw/broken skin. Clearly this is early bumblefoot, so today I will be going to TSC to get all the treatment stuff I need, including injectable antibiotics. Knock on wood, no one else is showing any signs of trouble, but HOW could 3 hens develop this in less than a week???
We have never had any difficulty with illness or infections, or even mites before. We keep the coop very clean and the girls free range for most of the day in our fenced yard.
The only things i can think of that have changed are that it's been super humid and HOT around NJ these past couple of weeks, and we've been having thunderstorms a lot. Plus we added 2 Peking ducks to the flock this spring, and gave them a bathing pool. I read somewhere that these types of staph infections can show up after stormy periods where the birds feet stay wet, and they drink from standing pools of water, or if there is a pool of water they can get it from drinking that as well.
I am very aware how contagious staph is, and I am concerned that we now have 3 birds with a problem when as of Friday, we only had one. Has anyone else had a similar outbreak? How fast does this stuff really develop? Did I maybe just miss something important during their last checkup?
After we dealt with Red's toe on Friday, we inspected the rest of the girls very carefully, and none of them had anything suspicious. Sunday afternoon rolled around, and we changed Red's dressing and did another inspection of everyone. Red is looking pretty good, but NOW, 2 other hens have developed small black sores on the pads of their feet!!! One has pinhead sized sores on both feet and some swelling, and the other has a slightly larger but still small kernel, with no other sign of infection, swelling or raw/broken skin. Clearly this is early bumblefoot, so today I will be going to TSC to get all the treatment stuff I need, including injectable antibiotics. Knock on wood, no one else is showing any signs of trouble, but HOW could 3 hens develop this in less than a week???
We have never had any difficulty with illness or infections, or even mites before. We keep the coop very clean and the girls free range for most of the day in our fenced yard.
The only things i can think of that have changed are that it's been super humid and HOT around NJ these past couple of weeks, and we've been having thunderstorms a lot. Plus we added 2 Peking ducks to the flock this spring, and gave them a bathing pool. I read somewhere that these types of staph infections can show up after stormy periods where the birds feet stay wet, and they drink from standing pools of water, or if there is a pool of water they can get it from drinking that as well.
I am very aware how contagious staph is, and I am concerned that we now have 3 birds with a problem when as of Friday, we only had one. Has anyone else had a similar outbreak? How fast does this stuff really develop? Did I maybe just miss something important during their last checkup?
