Frostbite on both legs! Help!

[centrarchid]

Over the years I have racked up some experience with frost bite. My birds are very much out in the elements and with the exception of combs are very resistant to frost bite. Exceptions involving feet almost always involve affect bird being in poor health or underweight. Chickens can be hard to read on those issues without periodically handling them. You can cheat by blocking wind and keeping them warm but birds themselves can still defeat that effort.

Your current bird would be better served if you restore its weight before returning it to the coop. Also for all your bird I suggest you make sure they are getting sufficient grit and have a diet with a little more energy and protein than is typically used for laying hens which can be supplied by mixing in a grower feed into the mix. Providing small amounts of shell corn can be advantageous once protein requirments are met because the corn is enticing enough to stimulate feed intake even after birds are satiated on the complete you are using. The added crop fill will make so more fuel is in the furnace even into the wee hours of the morning. Right after the crop is emptied the birds will tap into fat reserves which pulls weight down and compromises their ability to generate and conserve heat.

 

[lauranickerson]

Thank you for your replies! So helpful! This bird tends to sleep on the ground, which baffles me, but not matter how many times I set her on the roosts, I always find her on the coop floor all huddled up. I'm not sure which came first: she may have gotten a small amount of frostbite on her feet that I just didn't notice because of her dark skin, which then would prevent her from getting around well and onto the roosts, or if she just liked sleeping on the floor, which caused the frostbite. :/ I didn't notice anything too out of the ordinary yesterday, and my partner let them out and fed them this morning before we left for work, and he is a little less than observant. But when I got home, that's how I found her.

I will up their food intake, just in case I am not feeding enough. I typically give them pellets, and some scratch or corn, whichever I have. Right after work, I stopped to get more pellets, scratch, and I'm doing some sunflower seeds so I don't have to worry about a different source of protein. As for grit, they have access to oyster shell and also have a dirt floor in the coop, which is covered in hay, but they have no issues scratching the hay away during the day.

Should I be putting anything, like antibiotic ointment on her feet? I sprinkled about half of an aspirin in her water to help.

 

[lauranickerson]

I'm having lots of trouble with combs, too, but I can only put vaseline on so many times...

And I feel like after a certain temp, there's not much you can do for frostbite. We've been about -20, even got down to -30...ALL BEFORE WINDCHILL (which was awful...about -47) , but had a bit of a warm front move in...and we were at like 5 degrees today. Currently at -11 before windchill.

It's supposed to gradually get up to 35 by Tuesday! That's like t-shirt weather!!

 

[centrarchid]

Thank you for your replies! So helpful! This bird tends to sleep on the ground, which baffles me, but not matter how many times I set her on the roosts, I always find her on the coop floor all huddled up. I'm not sure which came first: she may have gotten a small amount of frostbite on her feet that I just didn't notice because of her dark skin, which then would prevent her from getting around well and onto the roosts, or if she just liked sleeping on the floor, which caused the frostbite. :/ I didn't notice anything too out of the ordinary yesterday, and my partner let them out and fed them this morning before we left for work, and he is a little less than observant. But when I got home, that's how I found her. 

I will up their food intake, just in case I am not feeding enough. I typically give them pellets, and some scratch or corn, whichever I have. Right after work, I stopped to get more pellets, scratch, and I'm doing some sunflower seeds so I don't have to worry about a different source of protein. As for grit, they have access to oyster shell and also have a dirt floor in the coop, which is covered in hay, but they have no issues scratching the hay away during the day. 

Should I be putting anything, like antibiotic ointment on her feet? I sprinkled about half of an aspirin in her water to help. 

Exchange some of the scratch for a grower feed like used for chicks. Your current diet may be too lean with respect to protein content. Under extreme conditions like you have that is more than an economic consideration. Also consider putting out dry straw in a location the ground roosting birds congregate. If you know where they loaf, then place straw there as well. The straw can help them control heat loss through feet.

Also put some actual grit in with the birds. Soil making up floor may not have enough grit and oyster shell does not cut it. The grit will enable faster processing of feed which can be very important when fighting cold.


Feel free to do the antibiotic treatment but also get the afflicted bird in a warmer / drier location. Based on appearance on toes, the frost bite is several days old. Check other birds.


Show a picture of setup. There may be additional methods for protecting birds from cold stress. Most experiences I have with frost bite actually struck during the day. At night birds are usually pretty good at covering feet. If outside in the extreme cold and wind, they may need improved locations for loafing.

 

[Cknldy]

This happened to a silkie that I had a couple of years ago. Both feet froze because it didn't set on them, there was a heat light in the building and no spilled water- feet didn't even have ice on them but they froze. It took over a month of spoiling and care to get her back in top form. I posted pics all that time ago because it is just like frostbite with people- the cells that froze burst when warmed back up, dead areas will die off and eventually peel to reveal shiny new skin. I did salt soaks 3 times a day followed by triple antibiotic ointment liberally on entire area plus a bit out to the unaffected area. The biggest thing is infection happening while things are healing. The soaking softens the skin thus making it more pliable and not hurt as much as it peels away. Don't use shavings in her area because they'll stick to the ointment and because they are not going to be comfortable poking tender feet. I used soft fabric and an old comfy soft sweater in the silkies box, changed out frequently. It got to the point that the silkie only wanted the sweater though and that was used as encouragement for mobility as the feet got better! I'd put the sweater outside of the box and turn to see her using her wings to balance just to get to the sweater I've never used aspirin so I can't attest to that but you should be able to tell when your girl is hurting as it heals. My silkie's feet got really hot (like when we run a fever to fight infection) and the soaks seemed to help with that also. Thankfully your girl's feet don't look at bad as the silkie was so the healing might go faster. All is not lost though- it may only be skin damage so actual digits may not fall off/become dead

 

[lauranickerson]

Exchange some of the scratch for a grower feed like used for chicks. Your current diet may be too lean with respect to protein content. Under extreme conditions like you have that is more than an economic consideration. Also consider putting out dry straw in a location the ground roosting birds congregate. If you know where they loaf, then place straw there as well. The straw can help them control heat loss through feet.

Also put some actual grit in with the birds. Soil making up floor may not have enough grit and oyster shell does not cut it. The grit will enable faster processing of feed which can be very important when fighting cold.


Feel free to do the antibiotic treatment but also get the afflicted bird in a warmer / drier location. Based on appearance on toes, the frost bite is several days old. Check other birds.


Show a picture of setup. There may be additional methods for protecting birds from cold stress. Most experiences I have with frost bite actually struck during the day. At night birds are usually pretty good at covering feet. If outside in the extreme cold and wind, they may need improved locations for loafing.

Like you requested, here is my set up.

Here's the coop tonight. 16 degrees.


Heres the run. It's a work in progress. They don't like coming outside too much because we have some extreme wind with all the fields around us.



Run again.


Entrance to the people-part of the coop. It's a mess right now. Free hay from the neighbor, so that's what I use for bedding.



The coop is pretty tall. To the left of the that wall divider, their housing will be boxed in with a big loft on top for storage. Roof is 12' high and slopes to 10' high. Just built this coop (10'x20') so it's only part-way done. There are small 1/2 inch gaps at the top of the coop. I have yet to seal with foam because it got too cold out....like...way too cold. I also left it because that is pretty much the only ventilation at the moment. Going to install windows and a vent this spring, along with cement floors, buried electric, and *hopefully* replace the metal walls with milled barn lumber from my dad's sawmill. That's where all this frame wood came from, besides the 4x4 beams. Had the metal laying around at dad's. Maybe put in some insulation too. Haven't decided yet.


Entrance to coop.


We put our christmas tree out there. They love snuggling under there during the day.


Temporary roosts and nest boxes.


Waterer is in a black plastic dish that is used to catch rabbit droppings so that the bedding doesn't get wet. I set the waterer outside when it's decent out.

 

[centrarchid]

Looks very nice. Frost bitten bird must be very challenged unless if spends a lot of time outside. Scour hole created by wind might be made less challenging with respect to windchill if you placed that tree on the up wind side and straw in the protected area. If only the single hen afflicted, then she has problems that set her up for the frost bite. The birds with frost bitten combs I assume are the leghorns. Those are very prone to frost bite and likely to be a challenge regardless of wind and / or humidity conditions.

Might consider increasing ventilation a little if air is getting a little stale.

 

[maddog3355]

In -20 degrees I would give them all the corn they would want and increase the hay in the coop and put some in the run so they don't have to walk on the snow. 6 to 8 inches deep would be plenty. Don't beleive all the naysayers on here about corn and chickens. When it gets that cold you need carbohydrates not proteins. You don't gain weight on protein you gain weight with carbohydrates. They need a little bit of fat on them in tough times like this. When it gets back up to +10 or so you can go back to what you where doing before.

 

[Blooie]

I hate to hear this about your EE. Ironically she looks almost exactly like Agatha, one of our EEs, who hatched out a chick that ended up with frostbite. I would suggest some rubbing in some Castor Oil. It will increase circulation to the bad areas. Infection is going to be your biggest enemy. I wish I could tell you that her feet will be okay, but my experience with Scout don't back that wish up. I thought he was doing great - feet looked wonderful. But a week later they were curled and have remained that way. He hasn't lost any toes, but his feet are deformed from deep damage.

Rather than go into all of it in a post, you might check out Scout's run-in with frostbite and his treatment. The link is in my signature - it's a diary of what we did for him. He was just a chick when he got his feet wet, and it had gotten down to -17. He was young enough that his feet hadn't toughened up like adults' feet do. His mom did her best, but as badly as those feet froze and as fast as it happened, no amount of covering him would have prevented it, I'm afraid. I hope Scout's story has some advice you can use. I'm so sorry this happened to yours.

 

[lauranickerson]

Yes it's the leghorns that are having the most trouble. I see my almost two year old leghorn's comb shrunk considerably when winter came, and probably doubled in size the last couple days. My two Welsummer roos are also having a bit of trouble. I plan on going out with some more vaseline/antibiotic ointment.

When it comes to the hen, (I think I will name her Elsa, because she's...ready for it...Frozen (see what I did there?)), must I feed her antibiotics or can I just use topical antibiotics? The only oral antibiotics that I might possibly still have leftover are for treating CRD.

Thank you in advance! Keep those suggestions rolling!

PS: I fed her pellets that I mixed with warm water to create a mash. It was so nice to see her drinking and eating as if she would normally. I did notice a problem with her wing, though. I will reevaluate it in the morning, but it could even be broken.