Help! Turkey has huge swollen area on foot! - UPDATED.

[lengel]

Two of my turkeys went super-broody for a few weeks. It seemed like I rarely saw them walking around.

Now they are up and about and there's this huge, maybe golfball sized swelling on one of the turkey's feet near the base of her toes. It doesn't look like the skin is split or that there is an external opening which might have gotten infected.

I need help because it's clearly painful for her to walk on it but my DH, in an effort to clean up my computer, deleted all of my photo packages so I can't post the pic yet.

Any ideas?

 

[LeBlackbird]

Could be an absess of some sort.

 

[Birch Run Farm]

It is bumble foot, there are postings on the emergencies and diseases forum about this issue. Good luck, it can be cured, etc, go search the threads...

 

[dixiedoodle09]

WE had a hen with a big bump at the base of her toes and it was bumblefoot. I did lots of research on here and had lots of advice on how to treat. We were successful at treating her. So do some research it helps a bunch.

 

[BluegrassSeramas]

Make sure you stay clean!! Its Staph in there!

 

[lengel]

Thank you everyone for your help. I have never seen this before. I am sure that it was because of the brooding. She was so aggressive about staying on those eggs that I left her to it but I should have made more of an effort to get her out of that area so that I could clean up. This is the same turkey who attacked another turkey so brutally that I had to separate them into different enclosures. No excuse but I tend to leave her alone.

New question: I was about to perform the procedure to clean it out but when I went down there a couple of days ago the swelling was much smaller and she was running around without a problem (when I posted before she was lifting the foot occasionally). Now the swelling is almost gone. It was at the base of one of her toes, not the bottom of her foot. Today I had to look twice to see that it was still there.

Any suggestions? Leave it? Do the surgery anyway? What would you do?

 

[Eggs4Sale]

I, personally, would leave it alone and keep an eye on her.

 

[notaspringchicken]

Quote:
I would leave it alone. We (human doctors) do incision and drainage of abscesses for several reasons. One is to reduce pressure and thereby relieve pain. Another is that big collections of pus and dead cells and debris are great places for bacteria to multiply. They tend to become walled-off and they have little or no blood supply, so the blood can't carry white blood cells to the area to fight the infection.

Since your hen no longer seems to be in pain, and the area is not large, it will probably keep healing on its own. It may have burst on its own, or perhaps she pecked it open.

That reminds me, a few days ago I had a patient come in with a big underarm abscess. I told him to come back the next day to have it drained, and scheduled in time for the procedure. We got everything ready and the patient signed the consent and then he took off his shirt--and the abscess was much smaller, but the surrounding area was bruised and bleeding and clearly infected. "I squeezed it with a pair of pliers," he sheepishly admitted. Now at least we don't have to worry about our turkeys doing that!

 

[Eggs4Sale]

Somebody was trying to save a doctor's bill!
Criminy. Did he at least use Snap-On?