Bumblefoot vs Neomycin: a Backyard Study

[DaisyG2317]

Great job! I just came off a course of Mupirocin, was going to toss the tube but I will definitely be hanging on to it now!

 

[humblehillsfarm]

I wish I had found this thread sooner. I had bought some Tricide-Neo from Koi acres and mixed with one gallon of distilled water as directed and did a five minute soak daily for a week for two hens and saw little to no improvement and stopped because it was a pain in the rear to try to soak them. One bumble is very, very advanced. The other is a teeny dot. I had been wondering about doing a twice a day soak, which just isn't possible for me, along with wrapping with silver sulfadiazine and keeping them isolated for a few days as a more targeted approach. If you're saying it worked after doing this for a few months I'm willing to give it another go. Where did you buy yours? I felt mine was quite expensive....

 

[maadroj]

Update: Success!

I've been remiss in taking pictures, but in five of the six hens, their external bumbles completely resolved in two months of every-other-day treatment and there are now no signs of swelling or discoloration. It took about two weeks of cumulative treatment to start seeing results, but healing progressed quickly after that.

However, one of my "skinny girls" has actually gotten worse during treatment and I anticipate needing to cull soon—she's living with the rest of the flock for another week or so, getting in some good times before she goes.

Neomycin seems effective in treating bumblefoot in otherwise healthy birds, without the need of surgical intervention. Drawbacks are the time and space it takes to treat and the potential for reoccurrence if the "core" of the abscess is not resolved. 5 gallons worth of Tricide-Neo ran about $70, which goes much further when diluted to a (quite arbitrary) "bird dose."

I'd highly recommend this route to anyone dealing with bumblefoot who isn't willing or able to seek/perform surgery.

Thanks for sharing! I think I was also successful with a nonsurgical treatment, although it probably wasn't as serious as your birds' to begin with (and I'm not 100% sure it was bumblefoot?). I only had one bird to treat, too, so it was possible to take a more involved approach (and not easy because she hated it; one person held her while the other treated and wrapped, and a cloth over her head helped keep her calmer).

We soaked her feet in an epsom salt bath first, then I slathered the foot in Bacitracin ointment (off the shelf in the pharmacy first aid section) and wrapped it it to keep the foot clean and ointment on. Repeated every 1-2 days. After some time, the plug came off with the wrapping. I repeated a few more times to be sure. It took about three weeks.

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 18

 

[MDBird]

Thank you all for sharing you tips. I have been doing the Epsom salt, bacitracin and wrap. So far it seems to be working, just slowly but seeing your progress after 18 days gives me hope.

 

[FowlLove]

Wow, great improvement! Thanks for sharing your experiment and it's results!

 

[le_bwah]

I wish I had found this thread sooner. I had bought some Tricide-Neo from Koi acres and mixed with one gallon of distilled water as directed and did a five minute soak daily for a week for two hens and saw little to no improvement and stopped because it was a pain in the rear to try to soak them. One bumble is very, very advanced. The other is a teeny dot. I had been wondering about doing a twice a day soak, which just isn't possible for me, along with wrapping with silver sulfadiazine and keeping them isolated for a few days as a more targeted approach. If you're saying it worked after doing this for a few months I'm willing to give it another go. Where did you buy yours? I felt mine was quite expensive....

I looked back thru my search history—it was actually the 1-gallon mix that's about $80. Here's a link. I think I would have seen results sooner if I'd soaked them more frequently or used a higher concentration of powder.

To make soaking 6 birds at once possible, I found a plastic tub that would hold them all and poked holes in the sides, filled the bottom with a layer of medicated distilled water, then plopped them in and covered the whole thing with a towel. 5-7 minutes per soak, every other day. They hated it, but nobody died of stress and I didn't have to hold them individually.

Hope your route of treatment works out, whatever you use!

 

[humblehillsfarm]

I looked back thru my search history—it was actually the 1-gallon mix that's about $80. Here's a link. I think I would have seen results sooner if I'd soaked them more frequently or used a higher concentration of powder.

To make soaking 6 birds at once possible, I found a plastic tub that would hold them all and poked holes in the sides, filled the bottom with a layer of medicated distilled water, then plopped them in and covered the whole thing with a towel. 5-7 minutes per soak, every other day. They hated it, but nobody died of stress and I didn't have to hold them individually.

Hope your route of treatment works out, whatever you use!

For one bird I could put the liquid in a bag and put the bag around her foot and hold her. She would just nap and it was a very sweet bonding moment. The other bird was wild and would tear a hole in a bag. For her I probably would have to lock her in a tub. Her bumblefoot wasn't nearly as bad and I have yet to check on it's progress since I did a nightly soak for a week.

 

[igorsMistress]

Excellent news @le_bwah although I'm sorry to read you may need to cull one of them.
Thanks so much for the update!

 

[Quailsducks33]

I wish I had found this thread sooner. I had bought some Tricide-Neo from Koi acres and mixed with one gallon of distilled water as directed and did a five minute soak daily for a week for two hens and saw little to no improvement and stopped because it was a pain in the rear to try to soak them. One bumble is very, very advanced. The other is a teeny dot. I had been wondering about doing a twice a day soak, which just isn't possible for me, along with wrapping with silver sulfadiazine and keeping them isolated for a few days as a more targeted approach. If you're saying it worked after doing this for a few months I'm willing to give it another go. Where did you buy yours? I felt mine was quite expensive....

Any update on yours?

 

[humblehillsfarm]

Any update on yours?

I eventually tried Epsom salt soaks doing a 45-60 minute soak on each hen and wrapping the foot with antibiotic ointment. That did nothing. Didn’t even loosen the plug. Now I’m at the beginning of week 2 for trying the antibiotic Baytril 2.5% orally Injected. I got it from allbirdproducts.com So far I’ve not seen any significant improvement.