Giant (mud?) balls on ends of toes?

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Hi! I am so glad to find this post after hours of searching online about this topic
yesss.gif
My question is how hot of water do you use for soaking the chickens foot?
Thanks so much for your help
 
Welcome to BYC. Probably no hotter than you would use to bathe in. Time soaking, some soap,and breaking up the mud balls is the key. Some even have to carefully use pliers to break them up, but watch out not to injure the toes.
 
Hi, big fan of backyardchickens.com! I have been hatching/raising chickens for years but I never saw this until now. I have 12 Americana chicks that I got when they were likely 5-7 days old. I keep their brooder clean as I always have, and give them their water via a quail waterer, and starter crumble for chow. Maybe 5 days ago I noticed balls of poo/food forming on their nails.within a couple days the balls grew and a couple "spread" up the toes like socks more that balls. I decided to give em the chicken "hot tub" (a shallow 4" sq tupperware with a half inch of really warm water). They pitch a fit when I take em out of the brooder but they quiet right down as soon as I put them in the tub. A couple of them had no nail left at the end of their toes once the balls soaked off. One had a middle toe that was black. I cleaned em up with h30 (peroxide), dried them well, and they seem to be doing ok. Just crazy, I have never seen this before. It's like the balls were so dry n tight that they were killing the toes. Any input?
 
Tucker777 said:
Hi, big fan of backyardchickens.com! I have been hatching/raising chickens for years but I never saw this until now. I have 12 Americana chicks that I got when they were likely 5-7 days old. I keep their brooder clean as I always have, and give them their water via a quail waterer, and starter crumble for chow. Maybe 5 days ago I noticed balls of poo/food forming on their nails.within a couple days the balls grew and a couple "spread" up the toes like socks more that balls. I decided to give em the chicken "hot tub" (a shallow 4" sq tupperware with a half inch of really warm water). They pitch a fit when I take em out of the brooder but they quiet right down as soon as I put them in the tub. A couple of them had no nail left at the end of their toes once the balls soaked off. One had a middle toe that was black. I cleaned em up with h30 (peroxide), dried them well, and they seem to be doing ok. Just crazy, I have never seen this before. It's like the balls were so dry n tight that they were killing the toes. Any input?
Click to expand...

Can you post photos of the feet?
At 5-7days old, that's quite a lot of build up over a short period of time. Clean out your brooder and put down a layer of fresh clean bedding. Toes turning black would seem to indicate dead tissue they may have an infection from the poop balls forming on the feet.
 
We have the exact same thing on our chicken's toe. It has not happened to any of the other chickens. Would love to know advice!!
 
We have one chicken that seems to have the same issue and we are concerned that a little part of her toe my be lost in the process of removing the mud ball. Any advice? Will be doing the long soak tonight in an effort to remove the mud ball...a little scared. Should we take her to the vet??
 

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