Hello. My hens have had Bumblefoot many times. I have researched it from every angle imaginable. The first time, as you did, kimyey, I took Buckbeak to the vet. They preformed surgery on her and removed three extremely large bumbles. She received oral antibiotics. It cost $700, so the next time we had a bumblefoot case, that was out of the question. I did learn a lot about Bumblefoot and the treatment for it from the vet, however.
On Youtube, you can find
countless videos where some guy with dirty hands picks a scab off his hen's foot and just lets her go straight back to the coop. This will not help at all. I'll start with a definition.
Bumblefoot is the accumulation of infection in the inside of a foot. It is not contagious and only occurs in poultry and Guinea Pigs. Birds have a different kind of pus than humans do. Their pus slowly hardens over time, forming "bumbles" if it accumulates in one place. A chicken will get Bumblefoot from falling or jumping to the ground from a high place. Particularly heavy breeds are susceptible. When they fall/jump, if they land hard enough, they might injure the soft tissue in the foot. The pus will come if it gets infected. If there is no route out of the foot, the pus will stay there and collect. Slicing it open it that route out.
This will be
a lot of work for 7 hens, but what can you do? From your photos, it seems your girls have a lot of bumbles per foot. Those need to be surgically removed. It's the only way. The injured girls must be kept separate from the rest of the flock. Preferable indoors, to keep away the flies. I keep mine in the garage in crates when they need isolation. It would be *
ideal* if they were all separate from each other, but with 7 hens, I doubt you'll accomplish that.
First, a list of supplies:
Epsom salt
Scalpels (you can get these from your local farm and feed store)
Triple-Antibiotic ointment with no pain killer (pain killer is poisonous to chickens)
flex bandages (@walmart)
surgical pad (@walmart)
no stick pad (@walmart)
gauze (@walmart)
Hydrogen Peroxide
disposable gloves
bath towel
skinny pool noodle
tweezers
The infection is still there! You have to cut into the foot to fish it out.
Instructions for surgery and care afterward:
1. Clean foot in an epsom salt bath. That's about a half cup epsom salt to a gallon of warm water.
2. Wrap chicken in the towel so her wings can't flap and place her upside-down in your lap so her head is in between your knees. You may want to cover her vent with a few paper towels as a sort of diaper as some chickens poop when panicking.
3. Now comes the hard part. I had to
really brace myself for this. Put on a pair of disposable gloves. Use the sterile scalpel cut into the foot.
View attachment 1047129
4. Focus on the left foot in the picture here. the little circle is the scab, the grey line represents the swelling in the foot. The red line is where you cut. I understand that it hurts the hen a lot, and may seem gruesome, and you really don't want to do this, but if you don't get the infection out, eventually the hen will lose her foot, and create a way worse injury.
5. Clear out any blood with a hydrogen peroxide solution - 50/50 water and HP.
6. This will sound really bad, but dig around in the hole you created with tweezers and remove any bumble you see. They look like this:
View attachment 1047134
7. If you don't find any, it's time to bandage. You'll look again tomorrow.
8. Bandaging. Stuff a little surgical pad into the hole/slice you just made. This is so that the wound doesn't close in the night. Then, put a square of non-stick pad over the foot. Put a big hunk of surgical pad over the non-stick. Cut about 1/2 inch off the pool noodle so you have a small donut. Put this on the foot so the hole in the noodle is over the swelling in the foot. Wrap the whole foot in gauze with the toes sticking out to keep the noodle in place. Finally, wrap the whole foot in flex bandages. I would say with the toes sticking out, but by thins time the toes might be just barely sticking out from all that bandaging. This excessive bandaging only gets used for a few days until the swelling goes down.
9. *sleep through the night*
10a. If yesterday you got no bumbles 10b. If you successfully removed bumbles
out, try cutting from a different angle yesterday, the swelling should be down.
today. If the swelling is reduced, Along with swelling comes hardness. The
however, then the chicken might have foot should be softer. It takes about three
been in an early stage, where the pus days for the foot to return to normal size
had not yet hardened. Then refer to and softness. Wash foot with epsom salts
step 10b. and re-bandage.
11. If the swelling has not gone, or you have any reason to think that there is still infection, dig around some more. If not, do daily peroxide/water cleans, and bandage. the pool noodle won't be needed after the swelling and hardness goes away. Neither will the little bit of surgical pad keeping the wound open. In fact, after, and only after the swelling and hardness go down, we need the wound to close. It's healed.
will this ever go away? I have been given them antibiotics
