Chronic foot infection- trying to avoid second surgery

[alinas2010]

Sorry- I meant the other side of the same foot. But, I'm impressed with the sugardine healing the abscess. Thank you so much- I will keep you posted, I feel like the stress is going through the anesthesia and hopefully the debridement isn't too much.

Good luck with surgery today

 

[muscovylove]

Hey there, so her surgery went fine but the vet believes the infection is in the joint. She had a very frank discussion with me- she believes the infection will come back. 2 major restrictions are cost for a bacterial test to know exactly what bacteria is in her foot- it's $600!!! The other is restrictions on antibiotics since she is a chicken vs a pigeon or parrot. I did connect with someone who has had a lot of experience with bumblefoot and they recommended adding Baytril to the clavamox routine she'll be on, hitting gram positive and gram negative bacteria. I was able to order some and it will arrive Monday.
I'm totally maxed out money wise with her unfortunately. There is another $1000 procedure where they inject antibiotics directly into her joint, but there is no guarantee with that either.
Does anyone have experience with amputation of a foot? I know that sounds horrible. The vet clinic will absolutely not entertain it. They believe it cuts the quality of life down way too much and they don't do well with prosthetics.
Does anyone have experience using essential oils/herbs/vitamins/nutrition etc to help support healing from infections? I'm going to throw all the spaghetti on the wall for her as long as I can. She's a sweet girl and a real trooper.
Thank you everyone for reading updates and replying- I really really appreciate it.

 

[alinas2010]

Ugh I’m sorry to hear the news, but I am glad surgery went well.

Laboratory testing is so ridiculously inflated. Do you have a college near by with a medical laboratory science program or a veterinary program? Or even a just microbiology one? They would likely be willing to work up bacterial sample for free or low cost for you to see what was growing. The process would likely be slower than any molecular testing the veterinary office could do, and they may be more limited in identifying the bacteria if it is something rare - which I would not think it is. But it is an option if you have access to a sample from her surgery and can call around you to a college. They can often do MICs (antibiotic susceptibility testing), also. Explain that this is your dearly beloved pet chicken and not many vets treat chickens, so you’re stuck trying to work this out yourself. With school starting a lot of those programs would love the experience for their students.

I know that is probably one of the least of your worries. But as far as the others…Chickens can and do live with only one leg. We’ve seen it here a few times where a foot auto amputates due to infection or a limb that has been restricted blood flow. It’s actually a neat, self-limiting process. Let me see if I can find an old post.

I think I have seen where essential oils of sorts do help with wound healing. Someone recommended them to another user once and an educator was going to get after that person, but then looked into it and found that there are actually studies on them supporting that they fight infection and promote healing. However I would need to look further into that myself, I do not know a lot about it. I think @coach723 might have more experience with natural things.

 

[alinas2010]

Here is a thread where the rooster lost his foot

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/rooster-very-sick-bumblefoot-complications.1642776/

 

[alinas2010]

You were asking about herbal remedies perhaps; the poultry dmv website has a lot of them listed with dosage and you can see the results of studies using the herbs. There are a lot so you’d have to weed through things, but there is a section on herbs with anti-bacterial properties if you’d like to check it out:

https://poultrydvm.com/herbs.php

How is she today?

 

[coach723]

Herbals can be very helpful in some situations. But when dealing with amputation, many are not recommended. When something self amputates, the circulation goes, the tissue dies, there is really no mechanism for them to work with the body in that case to aid healing. Caution is advised. There is one case that I'm aware of in humans (the case article is on the NIH website) where herbal treatment was considered the cause of self amputation in a human child who did not receive any other medical treatment.

• •
  The rare occurrence of bilateral autoamputation without any underlying vascular or neurological disorders in this patient is likely caused by vasospasm and thrombosis triggered by the herbal treatments, which possibly contain ergot alkaloids, given by the traditional healer.

For bone infection (osteomyelitis), it's hard to find info on treating birds. Because of their bone structure it can be difficult to treat. In my research a combination of SMZ-TMP and clindamycin seemed the best option for that. But dosing was a very hard thing to figure. I used it on one of my roo's for about 3.5 months at one point due to suspecting that was where we were. I did not have vet help, no one around here will see a chicken. His foot was swollen and hard, lancing found it was all bone. Knowing that if that's what was going on, I either had to try or he would die, I tried. He survived. I had to tweak the dosing several times when his droppings were not looking good, until I found a dose that he was tolerating ok. It all would have been much easier if I'd had experienced help. But so be it. Plumbs Veterinary Drug Handbook, and much internet research was my 'help", not ideal. My bird recovered and lived for many years afterwards. I cannot say with any authority that he definitely had osteomyelitis, that was just my suspicion. This was an infection that I'd already treated long term once before on him, several surgeries, and it had recurred. I was prepared to euthanize him rather than have more surgeries.

 

[muscovylove]

Herbals can be very helpful in some situations. But when dealing with amputation, many are not recommended. When something self amputates, the circulation goes, the tissue dies, there is really no mechanism for them to work with the body in that case to aid healing. Caution is advised. There is one case that I'm aware of in humans (the case article is on the NIH website) where herbal treatment was considered the cause of self amputation in a human child who did not receive any other medical treatment.

• •
  The rare occurrence of bilateral autoamputation without any underlying vascular or neurological disorders in this patient is likely caused by vasospasm and thrombosis triggered by the herbal treatments, which possibly contain ergot alkaloids, given by the traditional healer.

For bone infection (osteomyelitis), it's hard to find info on treating birds. Because of their bone structure it can be difficult to treat. In my research a combination of SMZ-TMP and clindamycin seemed the best option for that. But dosing was a very hard thing to figure. I used it on one of my roo's for about 3.5 months at one point due to suspecting that was where we were. I did not have vet help, no one around here will see a chicken. His foot was swollen and hard, lancing found it was all bone. Knowing that if that's what was going on, I either had to try or he would die, I tried. He survived. I had to tweak the dosing several times when his droppings were not looking good, until I found a dose that he was tolerating ok. It all would have been much easier if I'd had experienced help. But so be it. Plumbs Veterinary Drug Handbook, and much internet research was my 'help", not ideal. My bird recovered and lived for many years afterwards. I cannot say with any authority that he definitely had osteomyelitis, that was just my suspicion. This was an infection that I'd already treated long term once before on him, several surgeries, and it had recurred. I was prepared to euthanize him rather than have more surgeries.

Wow- THANK YOU for this information! This is all so interesting. She's been on amoxicillin for a while, I am going to get Baytril as well on Monday- I had to get it from a pigeon fancier. She's not recovering as fast from this surgery as she did last time in terms of weight on her foot. She does seem perkier for sure though. I'm so grateful for this group!!

 

[muscovylove]

You were asking about herbal remedies perhaps; the poultry dmv website has a lot of them listed with dosage and you can see the results of studies using the herbs. There are a lot so you’d have to weed through things, but there is a section on herbs with anti-bacterial properties if you’d like to check it out:

https://poultrydvm.com/herbs.php

How is she today?

Sorry for the delay! She's okay. She is eating a bit more than before the surgery- there is definitely more residual swelling than after her first surgery. I did get an estimate for the treatment they would be interested in trying- a tourniquet basically and injecting a direct antibiotic- it's around $1400, if there was a good chance it would be the end of the infection I'd consider it but the vet isn't confident about that. On Monday Baytril should get here and hopefully the combo of amoxicillin and Baytril will help keep the infection at bay. Interestingly, we have a family of crows that live in our yard and we saw one of the adults today with a foot hanging as if very broken. Poor thing. The bird was up on a post and flew down for a peanut so I'm assuming it's adapting well. Take care!