Hi BYC,
I have 2-3month old pullets & 5-1year old hens: they free-range in my large backyard and live in a wooden coop. They eat chick & layer hen feed with oyster shell & grit free choice plus lots of fruit, veggies, grass & bugs they find.
They seem really healthy overall but I got back from a trip 10 days ago and found 2 hens with 1/8-1/4" diameter black scabs on the bottom of their main foot pad, and the largest scab was on a slightly swollen, hot foot pad. We treated for bumblefoot, soaking the feet in a saline betadine bath for 15 min, peeling back the scabs, flushing with hydrogen peroxide, trying to remove any puss/pussy tissue (didn't find much), packing the wounds with triple antibiotic neosporin and dressing the wounds, 1st two days in a box in the guest room. We re-soaked a couple more times and re-applied the dressing a few times and then just let them alone to heal outside.
They seem to be healing OK, but the area where the scabs were is still a bit crusty and doesn't look healed over. Also, when we re-checked the flock, now two more birds have similar symptoms...we can't find what they're cutting their feet on, but did some removal of suspicious items, though I don't think we're confident we got the problem. I don't know what to do with the newly infected feet...or if the feet we treated are ok now, or if they'll just go back to being scabby. I am currently re-doing the roost from a 2x2 to the flat side of a 2x4, and only a foot off the ground. Should I try to treat the foot infections with an antibiotic in the water? Should I try to treat the scabs on the new birds with more neosporin and dressings and foot soaks? This is killing me!
Also, yesterday morning I found a long (3"), thin (1/8"), red worm in the fresh cecal poo one mystery chicken left on the deck. Then I checked through all their poo under the roost and found white maggoty looking transparent worms in the poo there, and now assume the chickens also have intestinal parasite infestations. So this morning I put Wazine (17% Piperazine (spelling?)) in their water (30ml per gallon) and left that for them to drink today to kill off some of the worms. I'll follow up in 2-4 weeks with topical ivermectin to kill the larvae. Before giving the wazine, I collected the grisly remains of the red worm and some of the fresh poo and sent it in for a fecal egg count to see what I'm dealing with, but decided to do Wazine whatever the outcome cause I figured it might help the chickens to heal their feet if they didn't have a huge parasite load, and I'd heard Wazine was relatively mild. The vet didn't know when the lab results would be in...they seemed pretty disorganized so I'm not too hopeful of a speedy result.
So, how do I manage to treat both the feet and the worms and take a trip for work Sept 4-14? I don't mind not eating eggs for a long while, if it means I can heal my girls up...they are beloved pets and I'm pretty stressed out by trying to decide what to do. Plus there are lots of feathers lying around, so they might be molting a bit...I've never been good at telling when they're molting.
Sorry for this long post, but things are complicated!
Thanks for any help!
I have 2-3month old pullets & 5-1year old hens: they free-range in my large backyard and live in a wooden coop. They eat chick & layer hen feed with oyster shell & grit free choice plus lots of fruit, veggies, grass & bugs they find.
They seem really healthy overall but I got back from a trip 10 days ago and found 2 hens with 1/8-1/4" diameter black scabs on the bottom of their main foot pad, and the largest scab was on a slightly swollen, hot foot pad. We treated for bumblefoot, soaking the feet in a saline betadine bath for 15 min, peeling back the scabs, flushing with hydrogen peroxide, trying to remove any puss/pussy tissue (didn't find much), packing the wounds with triple antibiotic neosporin and dressing the wounds, 1st two days in a box in the guest room. We re-soaked a couple more times and re-applied the dressing a few times and then just let them alone to heal outside.
They seem to be healing OK, but the area where the scabs were is still a bit crusty and doesn't look healed over. Also, when we re-checked the flock, now two more birds have similar symptoms...we can't find what they're cutting their feet on, but did some removal of suspicious items, though I don't think we're confident we got the problem. I don't know what to do with the newly infected feet...or if the feet we treated are ok now, or if they'll just go back to being scabby. I am currently re-doing the roost from a 2x2 to the flat side of a 2x4, and only a foot off the ground. Should I try to treat the foot infections with an antibiotic in the water? Should I try to treat the scabs on the new birds with more neosporin and dressings and foot soaks? This is killing me!
Also, yesterday morning I found a long (3"), thin (1/8"), red worm in the fresh cecal poo one mystery chicken left on the deck. Then I checked through all their poo under the roost and found white maggoty looking transparent worms in the poo there, and now assume the chickens also have intestinal parasite infestations. So this morning I put Wazine (17% Piperazine (spelling?)) in their water (30ml per gallon) and left that for them to drink today to kill off some of the worms. I'll follow up in 2-4 weeks with topical ivermectin to kill the larvae. Before giving the wazine, I collected the grisly remains of the red worm and some of the fresh poo and sent it in for a fecal egg count to see what I'm dealing with, but decided to do Wazine whatever the outcome cause I figured it might help the chickens to heal their feet if they didn't have a huge parasite load, and I'd heard Wazine was relatively mild. The vet didn't know when the lab results would be in...they seemed pretty disorganized so I'm not too hopeful of a speedy result.
So, how do I manage to treat both the feet and the worms and take a trip for work Sept 4-14? I don't mind not eating eggs for a long while, if it means I can heal my girls up...they are beloved pets and I'm pretty stressed out by trying to decide what to do. Plus there are lots of feathers lying around, so they might be molting a bit...I've never been good at telling when they're molting.
Sorry for this long post, but things are complicated!
Thanks for any help!
