Chicken foot infection / tumour

[waywind]

Hi all,

While trimming my orpington Becki beak, I noticed one of her toes seemed a bit swollen. Upon closer inspection, it looked as if she had cut her toe and it's gotten infected. She's not limping but the toe is starting to yellow on the surface, the toe is warm to touch and is swollen. The underneath of her toe also seemed to be dark red or dead cells.

I took her to the vet and got her a course of antibiotics for the week while the toe was bandaged (I think some of the yellow on skin is due to the bandage). Vet recommended upping the dosage of clavulox and doxycycline for one more week to see if it'll deal with the infection. We also did an x-ray to make sure the joints weren't infected. The vet also raised the potential for the dark red cells to be an indicator of a tumour. She seems to leading towards amputating the toe to resolve the issue.

I don't know the vet very well and not sure if she's experienced with chickens to know what she's dealing with. Wanted to get some experienced keepers opinions of the issue please.

 

[azygous]

Your vet needs to read up on poultry and how their bodies work.

When a chicken injures an extremity badly enough that tissue is injured beyond the ability to heal, it auto-amputates. What you see happening is the chicken's body walling off the damaged toe tip by cutting off circulation to that tissue. This results in swelling just above the damaged part where the blood is making a "U-turn" and the tissue is in the process now of turning black, soon to dry up and fall off.

This whole unique strategy is to prevent blood poisoning from infection by jettisoning the damaged tissue. Your vet wants to amputate a toe that is in the process of doing so naturally and safely. Tell them, no thanks.

 

[waywind]

Wow I never knew that; cheesh chickens are bloody amazing.

Would that be why maybe the antibiotics aren't really doing anything then? I hate to dose her up but I figured if there's a chance I could save her toe, it was worth trying.

So as per most cases, just keep her toe clean and dry and let her deal with it herself?

 

[azygous]

Yes. Antibiotics won't change things once a chicken's immune system has kicked into auto-amputation mode. Once the tissue has started to die, it's rarely reversible. Here's a thread made by a friend of mine here in BYC documenting her chicken losing both feet after serious frostbite during the Big Texas Power Outage. https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/matilda-is-going-to-lose-her-feet.1454933/ You can follow the process and see photos of how the chicken's body deals with severe tissue damage. Very fascinating. I learned about it when a hen of mine had a single toe auto-amputate.

 

[waywind]

Thank for sharing this. I'll see how Becki goes.

If it's a tumour of some sort, I wonder if the body will be able to detect it and drop it off by itself or if I need to intervene.