Ellie - dislocated middle toe - vet says surgery

[cat]

Quote:

chicken taco!

 

[fourfeathers]

I think that you made the right decision by not going with surgery. Please let us know how she turns out. I bet she will be fine. Your avatar picture is beautiful by the way!

 

[jjthink]

Hi, and thanks so very much for your notes.

With help (so there would be 3 hands instead of just 1!), after Ellie had been splinted and bandaged for 3 weeks, we removed that stuff on Wednesday (it took forever to oh so carefully cut everything away witha teeny tiny scissor - she was flinching a lot and I didn't want her to get cut). Her middle toe (the dislocated one) is deformed, fat around that first joint up high on the toe and kind of wobbly there. I don't care what her toe looks like, only that she not experience pain or be compromised in speed that may be crucial to have some other time.

The vet said to keep the bandages on for 2 weeks minimum but to try for 3, and so she had that stuff on for the full 3 weeks. Now she is holding the foot up a fair amount - maybe some cramping from having been wrapped up that long, I don't know. Will watch to see if that improves with the bandage off a awhile. I feel so badly for her. When she is interested in stuff, she uses the foot fully (when it was bandaged and since) to get where she wants to go but then in an idle moment she seems to need to rest it. After the attack on May 13, her foot looked okay at first - it was over the course of the next handful of days that the dislocation became extremely obvious - it got worse and worse as the days wore on. I'm hoping this will not be the case now, or all that time bandaged wil be lost - and it WAS NOT EASY keeping them indoors everytime the ground was wet, which around here seems to be all the time in the past several weeks and in the next several days to come.

She was indeed just like the fixings in a taco!

The above Ellie update is included in a more detailed (can you imagine!

) thread about the dog attack: https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=181285&p=19. Photos of the toe after 3 weeks splinted and bandaged are in post #185.
I posted about Ellie's injury separately here in the hopes of helping others in the future who might do a search about how to deal with such an injury.
JJ