- Jul 1, 2014
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Around 3 weeks ago, we found one of our girls limping across the run towards us.. her claw was black and hanging on by a thread! (We have 60 chickens so we possibly took a day or two to notice this unfortunately!)
I researched into this and found the best advice being to cut the claw off and bandage up the toe to prevent infection. So we did just that, and kept her seperate from the rest of the flock on towels and newspaper instead of mud etc to keep her foot clean. This is the result after doing this.
Over the following weeks, the progress of her toe has fluctuated, it began to swell and then the swelling went down. Her scales started sticking out so we treated her for scaly leg (these are still an issue but are going down every day we treat these).
As you will also notice, initially the end of her toe, where the claw had been was black. This has since fallen off to reveal new, pink skin underneath.
However, the swelling in her middle toe, her foot and her leg just seems to be increasing by the day! She is limping around but is in otherwise good health, she is eating and drinking plenty and seems happy enough, not being miserable like she is severely poorly etc.
This is what it looks like today;
Does anybody know what could be the possible cause of this?! None of our other chickens have shown signs of problems with their claws, so it must not be contagious. Is it worth a trip to the vets (we try to avoid this as much as possible unless desperate as we have to go far out of our way to find one that deals with chickens!)
I researched into this and found the best advice being to cut the claw off and bandage up the toe to prevent infection. So we did just that, and kept her seperate from the rest of the flock on towels and newspaper instead of mud etc to keep her foot clean. This is the result after doing this.
Over the following weeks, the progress of her toe has fluctuated, it began to swell and then the swelling went down. Her scales started sticking out so we treated her for scaly leg (these are still an issue but are going down every day we treat these).
As you will also notice, initially the end of her toe, where the claw had been was black. This has since fallen off to reveal new, pink skin underneath.
However, the swelling in her middle toe, her foot and her leg just seems to be increasing by the day! She is limping around but is in otherwise good health, she is eating and drinking plenty and seems happy enough, not being miserable like she is severely poorly etc.
This is what it looks like today;
Does anybody know what could be the possible cause of this?! None of our other chickens have shown signs of problems with their claws, so it must not be contagious. Is it worth a trip to the vets (we try to avoid this as much as possible unless desperate as we have to go far out of our way to find one that deals with chickens!)
