Bumblefoot! Update with new pics!

[The Sheriff]

History: Young Icelandic pullet, free ranges all day, cooped at night. I had not observed anything abnormal about her until today when I found her up on the roost in the middle of the day. As I approached her she stood up and walked with a limp. I then noticed swelling in her leg, back toe positioned weird, and an abscess on the foot. The pad of the foot appears normal. The only thing I have seen happen to her recently is that she was knocked off the roost a few nights ago but has been out and about during the day.

Here are some pictures:

This is the underside of the foot which looks pretty clean.

This is the back toe badly swollen with an abscess near it.

We are heading out to granddaughter's birthday dinner right now but when I get home the plan was to soak it and then use a large gauge needle and syringe to try to aspirate the area where the abscess is located. If it is solid I was thinking about opening it up more tomorrow and trying to pack it with Neosporin. I am also going to try to get my hands on some antibiotic.

Any comments or suggestions are welcomed.

Thanks,

Mary

 

[cocosandy]

soak it clean it out very well, and get all of the gunk out...look for a kernel because it may be bumblefoot. pack it with neosporin and bandage it with vet wrap..
Look for any tiny black dot that may be like a callus. It can be very small and hard to see. That would be the entry point of where the infection entered.
wear gloves because if it is bumblefoot, that is staph and you want to be careful not to get it.
Remember that chicken pus is like cottage cheese...so get all the hunk out and scrape it out as best you can so its empty.
The only other thing I can think is that I had a hen who somehow broke her leg and she got a huge swelling in her knee like that. It was all pus.
I opened it up and there were chips of bone and pus. I splinted her leg and put neo sporin all over it...I also injected the knee and her thigh with tylan 50.
she is limping around still but its unclear if it will fuse because she actually seems to have shattered her knee...I dont know how...maybe a thwarted animal attack.
Anyway, look for injury around the joint there and be very careful of the tendons, which are white and look like the very white connectors that you see in chicken that you buy at the market.
Take pics of what you get out and post them...I can send you some pics of bumbles if you want...and also there is a very good thread in the stickies in this forum that has pics of a bumblefoot surgery. That one presents in a very straighforward way, but I have seen some present with less of a black spot on the foot.
good luck

 

[cocosandy]

sorry- I dont see the bumblefoot pics posted anymore. here is the thread: https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=236649

 

[The Sheriff]

Luckily I am a registered nurse with lots of medical supplies on hand. I soaked the foot with antiseptic I got from the vet, then used an 18 gauge needle and syringe to aspirate out the pus. There was a lot of it. The abscess collapsed and I used a razor blade to make an incision. I squeezed it and pulled out the cottage cheesy stuff with tweezers. I then used a syringe full of the antiseptic solution and flushed the cavity until it was clean. I drew up Neosporin in a syringe and squirted it directly in the cavity. I then bandaged it with vet wrap and put her back in the dark garage in the cage she has been in this evening. She flinched a few times during the procedure but we had her wrapped in a towel and her head covered. As the pus came out you could actually see the swollen toe twist back into a more normal position. I'll see how she is doing in the morning.

Thanks for responding cocosandy. It did not present as typical bumble foot because of the location, although there was a black spot. I am hopeful for a complete recovery.

Mary

 

[The Sheriff]

Update. BarnGirl is doing well. We just removed her bandage and scraped out the cavity again, flushed it with disinfectant, packed it with Neosporin and redressed it. She will spend at least one more day and night in the garage in a large cage so we can observe. Here is a picture of the wound 18 hours after the first surgery. You can see some of the exudate I scraped out today on the towel. The blue color is due to the blue disinfectant I am using. There was a small hard chunk I removed today about half the size of a corn kernel. The swelling in the toe has gone down by about half but that toe my be irrevocably damaged. Yesterday the foot was hot and swollen but today the swelling is down and the temp is normal. I am certainly hopeful that she will be fine soon and back to annoying us every time we open the bar doors, trying to lay her egg in the hardware bins, hay bales. or paint roller trays!

 

[cocosandy]

great work! just keep an eye on it and see if it festers up any more of the hard kernel. That was probably the bumble but it does move. Youre lucky its not on the bottom....easier to keep clean!

 

[The Sheriff]

Thanks Sandy! We are rather proud of our selves, perhaps prematurely. All those years assisting surgeries paid off!

 

[The Sheriff]

Barngirl seems to be well on her way to a full recovery. I changed her dressing today and she has no more drainage just necrotic tissue where I opened the abscess. I packed it with Neosporin and dressed it with vet wrap. She was ready to return to the flock to complete re-hab in the coop.

But not until she got caught up on BYC. Sadly, she too has become addicted during her convalescence. I may have to put a PC out in the barn.

 

[cocosandy]

Yay...good work! you caught it early and got it out!

 

[remuda1]

Quote:

Glad your girl is doing well