Guineas losing toes??

[Fliese]

I have five guinea fowl who hatched in October (5mos old). I noticed one of them limping a few weeks ago. One of her toes looked swollen, so I figured that she hurt it jumping on the fence or something. I tried to catch her, but they really are afraid of people, even though I tried to handle them often as meets. Anyways, I figured that the amount of running involved in my trying to catch her would cause more damage than good, so I let it go. She's been limping around on the foot since, but was keeping up fine with the other birds and no one was picking on her.

I saw her perched on the fence rail today (I think it's the same one, they all look the same) and noticed the last joint of the toe is withered and black and turned so the bottom faces the sky. I'm guessing it's going to fall off. The rest of the toe looks normal colored but is swollen. Then I noticed that on the bird next to her on the fence, another blackened, shriveled end of a toe with the rest of the toe swollen. That bird hasn't been limping. I couldn't see on the other three birds, if they had the same toe situation, since they were sitting with their feet covered and then jumped into the snow.

Having two birds with the weird foot thing, and maybe more, makes me wonder if there's something bigger going on. They coop up at night and are fed Sprout brand All Flock, which is supposed to be for any fowl and is 18% protein. Could this be an infection spreading from bird to bird or a nutrition thing or just bad luck? I know Guineas have notoriously weak legs...

 

[Fliese]

I was able to get a closer look and all five have toes in various stages of trouble. After looking online, I'm pretty sure it's frostbite. I don't really understand how it's happening, as they coop up every night and their roost is a 2x6, so their feet are easily covered. Do I need to cull them or will they maybe be fine?

 

[taprock]

Two years ago I had a guinea who lost a toe to frost bite, she did fine. This winter my oldest guinea who had bad feet to begin with got frostbite on all but one toe. She has only lost one so far. I will not cull her unless she can not walk. At this point she still gets around great even with her feet being a big mess. I am not sure how she was frostbitten, she is the only bird out of 70+ that it happened to. She did, as I said, have bad feet to begin with. Our previous frostbite victim happened during a blizzard that filled part of my coop with snow. All the other birds moved to a dry spot and she stayed roosted on an iced up roost. The foot will bulb up to adapt to losing the toe. I will try get a picture if I am able.