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Thank you for all of that info. I'll PM you!I can plan to come over! I do the epsom salt soak first. Scrub the foot down with a brush and make sure to get all the toel nails and everything super clean. By that time, the foot is feeling really soft. Then I make my first cut with a very sharp Xacto knife and look around and see if I can pull anything out. I squeeze out what I can. Then I use the peroxide to spray in and let it foam out the rest I can't get. Often times it will bring up more junk to the surface and I can dig more of it out. Spray in more peroxide and wait until it stops bringing stuff up and out. I run water over the foot then in the sink to rinse off the blood. (I don't soak in the dirty water) Then I use the Iodine to clean it up after that. Then I cut up vet wrap length wise to make it thinner to wrap around the foot and in between the toes. I have cotton gauze on hand and I put a big dollup of triple antibiotic on that and then press it to the open hole in the foot. Then wrap (not too tightly) around the foot and in between toes to keep it on. I leave it on for several days and then take it off and see if it needs wrapped again. It probably won't need cutting into again-- UNLESS it's obviously still red and infected and you can see more pus coming out. If that is the case, then I repeat the process all over again, but then I add in Penicillin shots for the next few days too. It's probably not a bad idea to do the shots on the first go around, but I've had success without doing them on the first go. But the bottle is large and cheap, so it would be easy to do.
Of course I wear gloves since this is a Staph infection and easily transferred to us!
Showing the "plug" that has to be cut all around and then either squeezed off or finish cutting off.
Below-- showing how I wrap the foot:
Below: digging in over the sink... you can see the huge hole I have left after the infection has been mostly cleaned out!
Michelle, treat them & treat them all. Whatever is going around right now is serious. I just lost two hens & two roosters. Today I lost my pretty big lavender Orp roo, That's my two main roosters for my laying flock in the last two days. the rest of the flock is looking better tonight I think. The sickest ones have already died. I just hated losing those two roosters, they both were pretty boys. Anyway, this stuff moved through my flock fast & the ones that have died went down hill really fast.
Karen, I haven't tried a vaporizer, but I don't think I even know where one is if I still have one. I don't have kids in the house, so I don't think of those things any more. I do however have Oxine & made up a spray bottle of it & went out as the birds were all going to roost & sprayed everything including the birds. I just sprayed it all over the coop & they were in there. I didn't think it would hurt anything. Maybe that along with the Tylan will kick it. I made them all stay in all day today so they would drink the medicated water. I will see how they are in the morning & decide whether to let them out or not. They weren't happy with me at all, but I would rather have them unhappy at me than dead if that could make a difference making them stay in there. I knew if I let them out they would go out & drink the water I have up by the hydrant & not drink the stuff they need to. I had one little barred rock hen get out this morning & boy did I have fun trying to get her back in, she is a young one I got from Eileen a few months ago & she is close to lay now if she is not already laying. I would hate to lose her now.
I ordered from Hoovers - have always had good luck with them. This year, I ordered 10 rainbows (not rainbow layers, but rainbow straight run - they are a dual bird... hens lay a brown egg and roosters are ready to butcher in just 12 weeks) I'm finding they're not the hardiest bird - I lost 4 of them within a few days - they just seem a little more frail that the other breeds I got. I did tell Hoovers that I didn't want RIRs or rainbows. I won't be ordering the rainbows again - but am excited to see how the ones I have will turn out. I know I have a few roosters in my batch and they sure are big compared to the hens! They're about 3-4 times the size of the hens already! Here is a link to this bird: http://hoovershatchery.com/rainbow-straight-run.htmlI had that problem-- once they start to lay some where else, they won't change their minds about it unless you lock them in. I'm guessing they will just keep doing it and it wont matter. Sorry.Yay on the free chicks!!! Let us know what you end up getting!! That will be fun!
I'm not Trish but.....treating can be a tough decision because there are multiple potential causes of the same symptoms and without testing, we are only guessing which is the cause in any particular case. That means we are guessing at meds to use. The wrong one may not hurt but won't help either, and sometimes we have to try several different drugs until we find the right one. When you give the "right" drug, you should see a reduction in the symptoms within 24-48 hours. If there is no change after that time, it might be time to move onto the next drug.
