Good morning all. I am also dealing with a persistent bumblefoot issue in my one year old Barred Plymouth Rock hen. About a month ago I noticed that she was standing around with one foot tucked up, so I checked the bottom of her foot against the picture in my Chicken Health Handbook and there was an eraser=sized black scab on her foot pad. It matched the pic for bumblefoot, so I took her to our exotic animal vet. She drained it and treated it and wrapped it and told me to keep her in the house in a dog crate on newspapers and bring her back in five days ($140.00). In five days, she unwrapped it and it was on the mend, so she treated it and re-wrapped it, but noticed the other foot also had it, so treated that one too and wrapped it up ($58.00). Bring her back in five days. Ok....she's a pet and we love her, but in the meantime I have a chicken in my house. She is lonely and quite dirty, never knew how much one chicken can poop in a day and I am trying to keep these papers clean, but it's not easy! Five days later, the first foot is better, she can go home with that one unwrapped, but the second one needs five more days ($58.00 again). She's been on antibiotics the whole time, twice a day, and is very cooperative, but still I feel so badly for her. Then last Sunday night as my husband and I are medicating her, I checked her feet and the first foot had it again! I totally lost it, I cried all night long. My poor husband told me we will get this fixed, we should try something different other than what the vet is recommending. So, we put the dog crate inside a cut down cardboard box and filled it with deep pine shavings, no more newspapers, took out the perch and we asked the vet to show us how to soak and wrap her foot ourselves so that we can do it every two days. The vet tech there was very knowledgeable and told us to cut out all corn because it can be nutritional. They told us to switch from Blue Seal Organic layer pellets to Purina Sun Fresh layer pellets (don't know why), stick to red, yellow and orange and green leafy treats only, no scratch or hen treat and completely remove all pine shavings because they are too rough! ($141.00). Now, I need some advice from you all. My coop is very very nice, my husband spent $2,000 and all last summer building it for me. It is 8 x 8, houses six hens. The floor is linoleum for easy cleanup with two full bales of pine shavings put down every two weeks when we completely empty and clean the coop and scrub the walls and floor. The perches, two of them, and 18 and 24" high, 2 x 4 s, routed and sanded professionally. Their yard is 100' x 25' with large shade trees, hence a lot of big roots. They've got it pecked down to dirt, so I brought in a load of organic triple ground mulch this summer for them to have something to peck in. If I were a chicken, I would want to be one of my chickens, this is a beautiful and safe place to live. I clean up all the poop in their yard every morning with a pooper scooper. They have water everywhere and three really nice Fowl Stuff nest boxes. What in the heck am I doing wrong??? I value all advice, cuz this ain't workin'. Is it true that pine shavings are too rough? These are the
TSC flake ones, very deeply put down. Should I switch to the fine ones? The vet said to use yesterday's news (are you kidding, in an 8x8 coop!). I have to get this poor gal out of my house and back with her pals.
