Duramycin to treat bumble foot? couple of questions...

[muell112]

One of my 13 layer hens has Bumblefoot. The vet told me to give her water with 400mg/gal of Duramycin for 5 days on, followed by 5 days off and then repeat. Has anyone tried this and does it work well? More importantly, does it have any negative side effects? She doesn't like to be separated from the others and I'm thinking about treating the whole flock's water if there are no ill effects associated with the meds. Any thoughts?
thanks!

 

[dawg53]

I dont recommend giving any antibiotics to any of your chickens including the one with bumblefoot. I recommend you perform bumblefoot surgery to remove the infection...that is the quickest and easist way to get rid of it. There are numerous posts here in this forum on how to do the surgery and all you have to do is type in "bumblefoot" in the search box. Good luck.

 

[MuranoFarms]

Honestly dawg, if you've managed to do bumblefoot surgery thoroughly and successfully then my hat is off to you! I have tried it 3 times, 2 different animals. First was my blue swede duck, then last night my golden comet hen. It is one of the most difficult things I've had to do to an animal ever! It seems like the more you get into it, the less you can actually see the infection and get it out! Neither one had a plug attached to the black spot and certainly didn't get 'cheesy material' out or anything that even looked like infection. My husband kept saying "this is just cruel, you're just digging a hole in her foot" So I mixed some duramycin in with the antibiotic cream and packed it up. I would love to try just antibiotics too...if I can get a correct dosage.

There is another thread that mentions an avian vet recommending Tricide-Neo powder for fish as a foot soak. It supposed to work after a week. If I can find the thread I'll link it.....I have to admit I didn't read the whole thing last night. It's 16 pages long!

 

[dawg53]

Yes, the trineo thread is long lol, I added my results to it as well. I'll get to that in a minute. Sometimes there are scabs on their feet that I've found dont require surgery; no swelling, no redness, no limping... no nothing, just the scab itself. I've opened them up before and nothing was in there. It was disappointing and frustrating (in a good way I suppose)that nothing was in there. Until I see one of my chickens with the slightest limp, redness etc...that's when I go digging for it and have been successful. Tricide neo works. The foot has to be soaked in the solution for 5-7 minutes a day(mixed w/ distilled water only), some BYC'ers were soaking twice a day....I only did it once a day. It worked great on the small scabs and infections, usually taking only a week to heal/clear up. However, with the larger infections, it took much longer. Some BYC'ers had been treating for over a month in severe cases. I had some bad cases of bumblefoot that I didnt have time for the daily routine with foot soaks, it would take just too much time to clear up. So after a week or so of soaking I opted for surgery to get it done and over with to heal quicker and get the chicken back to her normal routine. Also IMO catching and soaking a chickens foot for that long of period of time is too stressful on the chicken and me lol. Edited; There have been a few BYC'ers who've had DEEP infections from bumblefoot. They gave the chicken penicillin injections. One in particular I know of, the infection had spread throughout the chickens system and there was no amount of antibiotics that couldve saved it. They had to put the chicken down. On the otherhand, others used antibiotics and it worked and cleared up the infection. In your case I was wondering in there were actually an infection as I first mentioned above, antibiotics wouldnt be necessary.

 

[muell112]

Thanks for the info! I ended up weighing out the powder antibiotic at work - it was a little bit less than a tablespoon for 1 gal of water. I gave her that for 5 days on, 5 days and then repeated again. I also wiped her feet off with a disinfectant soap each day followed by a wipe of betadine. Her feet look just about normal now and she is walking around with no problems at all...I think I caught it early.

 

[teach1rusl]

Glad to hear that it seems to be working with no digging. I bought some of that powder, but haven't used it before. So I'm happy to hear that it appears to work, at least in mild cases. I've done the digging, and it was not fun...I was pretty clueless. But neither case was caught until I noticed a favoring of one foot, and there was some infection. Did you eat the eggs that were laid while she was on the meds???

 

[muell112]

Yeah, I am pretty happy with the outcome...I was going to take her back to the vet and have her do the digging if it came to that. With the eggs, she stopped laying. I'm not too worried about it as they go through phases. She laid a couple while on it and has since stopped, maybe since going to the vet an me grabbing her every day and putting her in the dog kennel so she wouldn't perch during the treatment as per the vets' recommendation...Everyone's kind of molting right now too...

 

[speckledhen]

Duramycin is nowhere near strong enough to touch a staph infection like bumblefoot. I never give antibiotics for it. Treating it topically works better.

 

[MuranoFarms]

Thanks Dawg! The 2 that I operated on were limping. I've looked for the tricide-neo in every pet store in town, but can't find it. I'm going to head down to an aquarium store about an hour away today, so maybe they will have it. Any idea where I can order it online?

Speckledhen, I read on another bumblefoot thread to use duramycin because terramycin was discontinued by the manufacturer. Is there something else I should use?

Thanks!

 

[dawg53]

Here's a couple links where you can order trineo. http://www.koiacres.com/
www.pondrx.com