I have the exception to the rule. This man hardly ever wants my help and hates, hates, being taken care of, or waited on. He hates being helpless and will often make unwise choices just so he doesn't have to ask someone to do something for him. He fustrates me to no end. Surgery tommorow with a long recovery time in store and I'm going to have to watch him like a hawk because he is going to push the envelope.
All that said, today was my surgery day. Chicken wise that is. I went and checked the flock and I had a total of six more birds to take care of plus the one I took care of three days ago, but had to get the bandages changed. Looked like wounds were healing pretty well on her. Still some swelling visable though. The tip of the toe with the hide peeled off still doesn't look great or healed so I guess i will continue with liquid bandaid on that.
Three of them didn't look terribly bad so I just soaked them and gave them PenG shots. I will try to do that for the next two days between runs to the hospital. I'm hoping they are healing themselves because I really didn't have the time or have the space to operate and house them. The other three all needed surgery. Of course they didn't have just one foot involved, they had to have both.
So, since husband was running around trying to get lawn mowed and weedeated today and our heater for winter fixed, I had to spend all day tending to the bumble foot alone. While one soaked in the bucket, I would do the surgery on another. A towel came in handy since I didn't have my chicken holder available. Just as well. All he ever does is gripe about them when I ask him to hold one for me. It was slow and tortureous for me as well as the chickens, but they were generally good patients. I found some didn't have much of anything under those scabs. One girl did though. Got the plug and pus and some small little white seedy looking things. I knew she had been hurting because I saw she would favor that foot while standing.
I went ahead and put that poultice BigBird talked about on each of their wounds and bandaged them up. They all also received a PenG shot. So, I doubt I can get them all changed tommorrow,but first chance I get, I will change their bandages.
One thing I did notice that helped was that one of the birds that I had soaked yesterday and put the poultice to was much easier to remove the scab from. Those that just have the espom salt soak today were much more difficult to remove. So, I would also recommend using the poultice wrap for a couple of days prior to doing anything with the scab.
I guess I will see how the wounds heal up with the iodine/sugar poultice wrap on them now.
